A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven
by SpanishLullabies
Summary: She broke the cardinal rule of living in Mystic Falls and to survive, she must rely on the one thing the rule was in place to protect her from. Until she discovers that the rule she broke, is one that will keep her from the man she could love most.
1. Evil in the Air

Disclaimer: Don't own VD.

AU

Damon and Elena

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter One: Evil in the Air  
><strong>

She's late.

She's so very late and every fibre of her being is berating her as she steps out onto the road in front of the Mystic Falls library and hears the squeal of tires as the librarian who had shoved her out of the building seconds ago, takes off in the opposite direction of where she's heading.

Clutching at the strap of her leather bag and rolling her shoulders against the heat that assaulted her the minute she stepped from the cool library, Elena Gilbert knows, without a doubt, that she may have been gone from Mystic Falls for only a two short years but nothing about the town has changed since she was eighteen and had escaped its clutches.

She knows, too, that the instincts that had been honed in her eighteen years of living within the confines of this town haven't changed as well as she feels sweat start to form on the palms of her hands as she hurriedly walks in the direction of her house, wishing that her brother hadn't taken her car that morning and that she hadn't chosen to ignore the announcement of the approaching curfew only twenty minutes ago.

Glancing up, the ebony eyed brunette sees the last door slamming shut and the deadbolt sliding into place as the sun's vivid red starts to fade dramatically into inky black and tries to fight the churning in her stomach as she realizes just how late she actually is.

There is one rule in Mystic Falls that all humans obey and that's to be inside their houses by curfew with the deadbolt in place and no intention of going back outside until the first crack of dawn.

She knows that in these last few moments of daylight, there will be only one police cruiser patrolling the area, making sure that everyone is inside and safe and she knows that it started twenty minutes ago when curfew was announced.

She's also pretty sure that she's not going to run into it on her hurried walk back to her house.

It takes that realization for her to know that not only is she late, she's also screwed because once that cruiser is sitting comfortably in the driveway of the sheriffs house and the sheriff is locked up in their house, there's going to be no-one to really help her because the second cardinal rule in Mystic Falls is to never invite anyone in at night.

The thought makes her bite her lip hard and Elena rushes across the road as she tries not to let herself be frightened by the fact that in the space of twenty minutes, Mystic Falls has become something of a ghost town.

The streets are deserted and the houses still, heavy curtains blocking any glimpse into the night lives of the town's residents. The only sound that she can pick up as she crosses another road into the town square is rustling of leaves as a cool summer breeze drifts through the picturesque town square. The shops are all shut tightly with no lights highlighting their displays or the shadow of the manager balancing the till at the end of the day.

There's only one street light alight and, in the fading sun, it casts long shadows over the town square and it makes Elena shiver.

There is something eerie and creepy about Mystic Falls after curfew.

There's an almost deadly silence to the town square as she nears the end, the sound of her sandals on pavement echoing in her ears as she once again wishes she'd bothered to leave when the announcement had been made.

Except she hadn't and now – with a hundred and forty-five years of vivid storytelling whispering in her mind – she's going to pay for her mistake.

In Mystic Falls, if you are out after curfew, the chances are you will never have to obey curfew again because the night residents don't appreciate humans on the streets when night has truly fallen.

The stories she can hear whispering in her mind remind her that hikers have been torn to shreds, popular townspeople who had known better had been drained of blood and some had come back to haunt their families with the gleam of blood in their eyes.

The whispers grow steadily louder as a hundred and forty-five years of brutal history of the night stack up in her mind and she curses herself for forgetting exactly what she had returned home too.

Two years in New York and she had forgotten that while the big city and bright lights could be dangerous, none of it compared to her hometown after dark and only a fool forgot that.

Apparently, she thinks with a deep breath, she is a fool.

Stopping momentarily to look at the sinking sun, her skin begins to crawl with awareness as she watches the last glimmer of sunlight begin to fade steadily. As she watches that last red streak disappear, she glances around, searching for a place that she could wait out the night.

Standing on the curb of the street, her white summer dress dancing in the slight breeze and her grip on her bag strap turning her knuckles white, Elena fails to notice the fog that's beginning to slowly curl through the town square towards her.

Raising a hand to the straight waterfall of ebony that falls down her back, she runs her hand through it, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth as she tries to think of where the hell she can go before she becomes the next victim in the long history of Mystic Falls nightlife.

It's a prickle along the back of her neck that has her glancing up sharply to the tree to the right of her.

Perched comfortable on a branch, its head tilted to one side, a beady eye trained on her, is a black raven. The relief at seeing another sign of life is over momentarily as the bird continues to watch her and a stunning rush of fear washes over her.

Turning away from the bird, her mind trained on finding a place to hide and with a prayer that the bird is not what she thought it was, Elena heads left, down a side street hoping that the other half of the Mystic Falls population won't come out until much later at night.

Even though she can hope, she has a feeling that the other half don't waste the night the way some humans waste the day. For them, she thinks, there's no point in wasting something when they could be doing something productive.

Like stalking their version of prey in the woods, she thinks viciously, turning out of the side street and trying to ignore the way the prickling at the back of her neck has become more insistent and the way the temperature seems to be dropping as she cuts across a street and tries not to run and attract attention to herself.

Rushing down another deserted street, with only the sliver of light from cracks in the heavy curtains highlighting her path, she thinks she hears the flapping of wings but convinces herself otherwise as she rubs the hand that's not clutching her bag strap along the material of her dress, trying to dry it.

Pausing at the end of the street, Elena tries to calm both her racing mind and her churning stomach and doesn't know if she feels lucky or even more terrified at the sight of a full moon beginning its ascent.

In any other town, it might seem beautiful and the glow of it stunning on the streets alive with life but on the deserted streets of Mystic Falls, the gentle shine of silver on the streets make them seem otherworldly.

The moonlight turns what had been a creepy ghost town minutes ago into a playground for those who ran the town after dark.

It also makes the fog she'd only just noticed glow as it starts curling around her feet.

It's a tell-tale sign. One that they are taught when they are young and warned they are not to be swallowed by.

For only a second, Elena's frozen to the footpath, her eyes trained on the fog that's slowly beginning to engulf her and the sound of blood the only thing she can hear as she tries frantically to think of a way to _move_.

It's the caw of the raven that makes her burst into action.

The prickling at the back of her neck has now become goose bumps, the churning in her stomach a sick combination of fear and adrenaline and the whispers of what's going to happen to her silenced as she sprints away from the fog and the raven.

She can feel the evil in the air that those who had survived after dark spoke about with fear in their eyes. It all but chokes her as she turns a corner and a cry catches in her throat as she finds herself back near the town square.

Forcing air into her lungs, she starts running across the square, swallowing convulsively as she realizes the fog has thickened suddenly and is enveloping her faster.

She wants to scream but knows it's useless as she heads for again for that side street that is a short cut. Her sandals slap the pavement loudly and her stomach becomes more violent as she tries to fight the terror that's starting to flood through her.

She hits the ground at the entrance to the side street and feels her skin break and blood begin to ooze as she scrambles up again, ignoring the stinging in her leg as she forces herself to start running down the length of pavement in front of her.

She doesn't scream when she looks up from the ground to see the silhouette of a man standing at the end of the street because she knows that he's not there to help her and if she opens her mouth, terror will make her vomit.

The sight of the silhouette makes her skid to a stop and she feels her ankle roll as she twists back to sprint towards where she came from.

The throbbing in her ankle makes her want to run harder and the fog obscuring the entrance to the street causes blood to roar louder in her ears as she stumbles forward.

It takes her only a few seconds to work up the amount of speed she'd had before, the pain in her legs forgotten, as she tries to get out of the side street.

It takes less than a few seconds for a scream to rip from her throat as the monsters the curfew is meant to protect her from bursts out of the fog, eyes savage with bloodlust and veins crawling across his face as his hand snaps out for her throat and he slams her back into the brick wall.

She's not aware of tears sliding down her cheeks as she claws at the hand that's pinning her to wall or that the hand is slowly squeezing the oxygen from her lungs as she struggles against it.

All she can see is the monsters face and the way his jaw opens and the fangs that are the nightmares of so many people are shown to their full extent, descending towards her throat.

Closing her eyes and renewing her struggles, Elena can only pray that something's going to stop this man from draining her and forcing her to become just another story told to the children of Mystic Falls to scare them into being home well before curfew.

"Please. Don't."

She's not all too aware of the words falling from her lips as her struggles lessen and she becomes dizzy from lack of air but what she doesn't expect is for a voice to cut through the fog and halt the monsters movements.

"You heard her, Steffie. _Don't_."

Elena catches a glimpse of midnight hair and a malicious sneer spread across a half shadowed face before the dizziness is replaced by a black abyss and she crumples to the ground as the monsters hand lets go of her throat.

* * *

><p>AN: Okay, so second attempt at a chapter story. It won't be a long one though, possibly ten chapters or less. It's kind of inspired by the epic Meat Loaf song, 'Bat Out of Hell'. I highly recommend it if you like the classics of rock, it's one awesome song. Because the story is inspired by the song, the title of this story is and the chapter names taken from the lyrics of the song. Also, Stefan's going to be somewhat out of character, as you probably picked up on in the last part of the chapter, and I have an idea of mixing book Damon with television Damon because there are elements of both I'd love to combine. And this whole new Mystic Falls world will be explained next chapter when Elena wakes up. I hope its okay because its very different from what I've done before and I've started this entire story _in medias res_. I hope you liked this start because I actually had a bit of fun writing it. On another note, I've taken _From Yesterday_ down and I'm going to rework it. I love the idea but I want to do it differently. So, sorry about that! Again, I hope you liked it!


	2. Blade Shining Bright

Disclaimer: Don't own VD.

AU

Damon and Elena

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Two: Blade Shining Bright  
><strong>

She wakes up clutching her throat and gasping for air. Terror rips through her body as, for a few horrifying moments, she's sure she's still in that side street and the monster has her by the throat, his fangs descending towards her neck.

She can still feel the throbbing of her rolled ankle and the trickle of blood from where the skin of her knee had ripped when she'd fallen. For those few seconds, her stomach churns in terror and she's so convinced she's still in the side street, her hands fall to scrabble against something…soft?

The smoothness of cotton beneath her fingers shocks her out of her terror and she shoots up, one hand returning to her throat as the other clutches at what she now sees is a cotton sheet.

Pushing herself up further, Elena slowly starts to take in her surroundings.

The room itself is huge and sparsely decorated. Looking around, she assumes that the bed she's on is the main focus and she can only imagine that it's the focus of the room because of its size. It's huge, absolutely enormous and sitting in the centre of it, she feels dwarfed by it. To her right, there's a huge window framed by heavy curtains and moonlight cuts through window into the room, slicing over the bed she's sitting on and highlighting shadows that make her nervous.

Even though the shadows are making her nervous, Elena looks around the room again, her hand falling from her throat and wonders _where_ the _hell _she is.

The second the thought leaves her head, the lights in the room switch on suddenly and she jumps, swallowing the scream as her eyes are immediately drawn to a chair sitting in the corner in what had been the shadows when she'd awakened.

But it's not the chair and the lack of shadows that cause her eyes to fly there; it's the man lounging in the chair casually.

He's _gorgeous_.

It's her first thought as she stares at dark hair that has been left to fall where it chooses and matches the sweep of five o'clock shadow that roughens up a face that seems to be sharp angles built around a pair of incredible blue eyes and a mouth that's twisted into a smirk as he allows her to study him silently.

It's a face that's too sharp to be considered pretty and, she thinks, is dangerous because of it. Choosing not to think too deeply about that thought, Elena allows her eyes to wander down a toned, sleekly muscled body clad in a black button down shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black jeans and black combat boots.

Her eyes move back to his and the only thing she can think is that he's _dangerous_.

"Welcome back to the land of the living. Well, the land of the living dead, at least."

His voice is low and velvety and has a certain edge to it. It's sarcasm but not quite and it makes her tilt her head to the side slightly in wonder before she realizes what he's said.

Her eyes widen and, almost unconsciously, she scrambles up the bed until her back is pressed tightly against the headboard. Her hand, which has fallen in the she spent studying him, flies back to her throat and the movement makes him chuckle.

"I – where am I?"

It is, quite honestly, the first thing that comes into her head because to even start thinking about who she's with and what they are is only going to serve to confuse her if she doesn't find out where the hell she is first.

"My place." Slowly, almost predatorily, he shifts so that he was leaning forward, forearms resting on his thighs. "You can relax, too. You still have a neck."

She glowers a little at that remark and then she realizes who she's speaking to and any other questions died on her lips as she realizes that the man sitting in front of her _saved her life_.

Her mind reels and the hold she has on her throat becomes lax as the memory of his voice echoes through her mind now that she's recognized him.

'_You heard her, Steffie. Don't."_

Those words had stopped the monster who had her by the throat, she remembers vaguely. He had appeared out of nowhere and had echoed her plea before she had lost consciousness. Except, no, she thinks, he hadn't echoed her plea. He had turned it into a command and _that _made her curious.

"Who are you?" She asks, inching away from the headboard slightly, curiosity outweighing a whisper in the back of her mind that warned her of what he was.

"If you're asking that question, am I to assume that the secret Sunday School sessions held to educate the human population of Mystic Falls about the seedy underbelly of suburban life have been disbanded?"

Her eyes widen and Elena finds herself leaning back against the headboard again as she wonders how he knows _anything_ about the town before curfew. She wonders, especially, how he knows about the 'Information Mornings' held as the sun rose to its highest point of the day.

He smirks at her expression, as if quite enjoying the fact that she's trying to figure out what he's said and how he knows and it causes something in her to stir in irritation.

"I asked you who you were, not if I know the status of the Information Mornings." She points out, irritation only an edge in the question.

There's a momentary silence and the whisper in her mind grows slightly louder as it reminds her that irritating him is _not_ a good idea. In fact, irritating him could kill her.

He either knows what she's thinking or is amused by the way she evaded answering his question because he chuckles again and amusement sparks in those blue eyes that makes her uncomfortable because something about the amusement makes her wonder what he's really amused about. Her retort or what she was thinking.

"One has everything to do with the other but I'll let you figure it out, hmm?" He smirks as he speaks and arrogance seems to drip off him at what she supposes is superiority he feels entitled too because she's at his house and has no idea who he is.

She tilts her head to one side as she thinks about his words and her brows furrow as she tries to see how the Sunday mornings she spent in weekly lessons about the nightlife until the age of fourteen could possible tell her who, exactly, the man in front of her is.

"I don't see - "

"What are you majoring in?" He interrupts her with a topic so random she can only stare at him.

The reality of the situation she's in hasn't begun to sink in yet because the appearance of the man who'd saved her life had managed to send any normal reaction she could have had into a total tailspin. This new question – and how he could possibly know she's at college – has sent her tailspin into a tailspin and Elena can't help but feel utterly confused.

"I – what?"

"What's your major?"

He seems to be waiting patiently for her answer but she has no idea how patient someone like him can be and suddenly thinks that maybe she should just answer the question because the whispering voice is warning her of being cautious with reacting to her situation.

"Uh – history."

He stands abruptly at her answer and she tenses up all over again, her mind racing as she tries to think how answering that question is going to lead to having her throat ripped out and her mouth falls open in shock as he moves towards the door instead of walking towards the bed.

Apparently, that amuses him as well because he appears to try to hold in more laughter and instead smirks as he stops just before the door. He turns and appears to be thinking before he makes a snap decision.

"Just because you're a history major and they generally work so much better with a clue, I'll give you one."

He says it like he's doing her a huge favour and Elena can't help but huff slightly at his words because she hates it when people take that tone with her and she also thinks that he's probably going to give her some sort of stupid clue about what he is because, well, she thinks that he might be a guy that likes toying with people.

He raises an eyebrow at her silence before opening the door and taking a step out of the room, so he's framed by the doorway.

"My brother's name is Stefan."

Her eyes fly to his in shock and he bows his head only slightly at her reaction to his clue. Before she can react, he shuts the door firmly and she stares at it in horror. She doesn't hear the click of a lock nor does she hear him walk away from the room. She can only stare.

She knows where she is. She knows who attacked her. More importantly, she knows that the stories which make up a good part of her supernatural education are made up of the man who attacked her and the one that was in front of her only moments ago.

Pulling her knees to her chest and leaning forward, her hand moving to cover her mouth instead of clutch her throat this time, Elena curses herself once more for ignoring the warning for curfew.

If she hadn't ignored it, she wouldn't have ended up in that side street, pinned to the wall by Stefan Salvatore. If she hadn't ignored the warning, she wouldn't have woken up in an enormous bed in the Salvatore Boarding House.

If she hadn't ignored the warning, she wouldn't have spent the last few minutes conversing with the vampire that had turned into a legend filled with love, blood and ruthlessness.

If she'd listened to the warning, she wouldn't have spent the last few minutes in conversation with Damon Salvatore.

* * *

><p>He's got to admit, the girl has spunk.<p>

As Damon Salvatore makes his way from the bedroom he so graciously deposited her in a few hours ago to the parlour, he's still intensely entertained by the few minutes of conversation he's had with the girl.

She's not, he decides, a swooning damsel in distress because she hadn't truly reacted to him when the last dregs of what he can only imagine was a vivid dream about his brother had slipped from her grasp.

Most humans, he knew from experience, reacted quite badly to finding him in front of them. Especially if they had grown up in the quaint little town he called home. The population of Mystic Falls were all aware of what he was and their way to deal with it was to lock themselves in their homes just before the sun truly set and pray that no-one had been left outside.

If someone had been left outside and come across him during the night, their reaction was not to faint or even runaway. No, the population of Mystic Falls had grown resigned to the slaughter of townspeople who were outside after curfew.

So resigned, when they faced him, they all accepted defeat and waited for the killing strike.

This made the girls reaction even more intriguing than her conversation. Not only had she run, she'd tried to fight against his brother's death grip even though she could see death was only a few moments away.

He'd stopped his brother because she'd been fighting, nothing more.

Though he doubts he is going to be believed when he comes face to face with those living in the house.

Turning a corner, Damon enters the parlour and chooses to ignore the three vampires spread across the room, heading instead for his drink cart and pouring himself a tumbler of blood laced bourbon. Taking a one long gulp from it, he turns to face the room and quirks only one eyebrow at the blond sprawled on the couch, her face alight with excitement.

"You know her." He states and Caroline Forbes nods excitedly.

Eternally seventeen, the blond is the youngest of the vampires in the room and – though he does loathe admitting it – one of his regrets. She'd been caught out three, nearly four years ago and had had her neck torn open by his brother. He'd made a split second decision that night and had wound up not only with a child but one in desperate need of mentoring.

It had only become more complicated when his brother had sobered slightly and seen who he had attacked.

Choosing not to think on it, he takes another sip.

"And her name is?"

Caroline sits up a little straighter and eyes him cautiously before taking a deep breath which means she's about to gossip.

If he didn't want to know who the hell the girl is, he probably would have stopped her on just that breath.

"She's Elena Gilbert. She was one of my best friends in high school before, well, you know." Caroline pauses slightly and he rolls his eyes.

"You lost the sympathy vote once you became excited about being able to run really fast, Caroline."

Both the other vampires in the room shift at his tone and the warning in it though Caroline chooses to ignore it, tossing her blond curls over her shoulder and squaring them slightly.

"The point is, she's Elena Gilbert and a member of one of the founding families. In fact, I think she's the _last_ daughter." Caroline eyes him pointedly and Damon chooses to ignore the last piece of information she's just passed on.

The grip on his tumbler tightening, he focuses instead on the fact that his brother – despite all his assurances that he was fine – had managed to attack a member of the founding families which meant there were ramifications for _this_ loss of control.

"You couldn't have chosen someone else to attack tonight, hmm? It _had_ to be that girl?"

His little brother shifts slightly against the walls he's leaning against at his words. Stefan averts his gaze only momentarily before meeting it squarely and Damon reads both regret and defiance in his brother's eyes.

"Her skin broke, Damon. You smelt her blood. I couldn't control myself." Stefan's words are remorseful and he can see that his brother is heading rapidly towards his brooding, self-loathing stage that he wants absolutely no part of.

"Congratulations, you finally admit you have no control. That's the first step in getting help." His voice is deliberately perky as he speaks and hardens only slightly when he continues. "Would have been nice for you to admit it after you'd drained someone that _wasn't_ a member of the founding families, but we'll take what we get, huh?"

Stefan's eyes narrow at his words and he takes a step away from the wall, deliberately shifting his stance into one ready to spring into action. The movements cause him to raise his eyebrows and take another sip of his bourbon.

"_You_ smelt her blood, Damon. _You_ were going to attack her."

Caroline is the one that moves at Stefan's words and Damon knows, just from the look she shoots him as she moves to his brother, that he's going to be in for a lecture from his irreverent child later in the night.

He doesn't respond to Stefan's words or even comment on the way his brother starts to relax fractionally as Caroline places a hand on his upper arm and begins to rub, speaking in a low voice as she coaxes him down from anger that leads to the inevitable bloodlust Stefan _cannot_ control.

He stays silent as she starts to lead his brother from the room, sipping at his bourbon as he waits until they're nearly out of the room before speaking.

"Stay away from her."

The words, and the command in them, stop both of them and Caroline's the one that narrows her eyes in irritation.

"Because we're both _so _going to drain her dry if we somehow manage to get into _your room_ while you're in the house." She snaps back and he shrugs as he watches Stefan tug at the blonds hand and start leading her away.

Caroline shoots him once last venomous look before he hears them on the stairs, heading towards his brothers room.

In silence, he continues to sip at his drink and waits for the last person in the room to speak. He'd had a feeling that they were going to wait until his brother and his child had left the room before voicing his opinion on their sudden houseguest and he can only guess what's going to be said now that what some would consider to be small, almost irrelevant pieces of information come to light.

Turning his head only slightly, he meets the contemplative gaze coming from the man sitting in the straight backed chair and sneers only slightly at the knowledge in it.

"How does she smell, Damon?"

"Like a human, Elijah."

The vampire's lips turn up only slightly at his sneering answer and he shakes his head. "Answer the question properly, Damon. If what Stefan said is true, then there's a reason she's in your room."

Damon wants to stop himself from answering the question. He truly does but in a twisted way, he knows that the man watching him is also the only one that he will be able to speak the truth too and, though it grates at him, he's probably the only one he _wants_ to speak the truth too.

"She smells different. Pure, almost."

"Ah." He scowls slightly at the loaded way Elijah enunciates that word. "And she's the last daughter of the founding families? A Gilbert, no less?"

"Apparently. Though, the information did come from Caroline."

He knows what Elijah is getting at and he doesn't particularly appreciate it. He doesn't want to think about how the ramifications of bringing a human back to the Boarding House have suddenly become much bigger than they had been before now that they know who, exactly, the girl upstairs is.

Elijah, apparently, gets the hint because he rises from his chair and starts tracing the path Caroline and Stefan had minutes ago.

"I'm going to hunt. Don't turn this into a game, Damon. You will only lose."

He narrows his eyes at the advice. "Is that a warning or advice?"

"It's common sense. And you know _why_ it is common sense."

Elijah leaves before he can retort leaving him standing in the parlour, alone. Raising the tumbler to his mouth, Damon downs the last of his bourbon and follows Elijah out of the house.

The sudden problem of Elena Gilbert in his room can be dealt with when he's eaten and his thinking is as sharp and bright as a shining blade.

* * *

><p>AN: ...so, is anyone confused? I'm kind of setting up the storyline and the links in these first couple of chapters especially because they're important. I also think there are a couple of surprises in this chapter, no? I wasn't consciously thinking about who the third character was going to be, though I always liked the idea of Elijah and Damon getting along. So, yes, second chapter. I'm a little rusty at the moment, it's been a while since I tried to write a chapter story and working it out in my head is kind of, intense. But I hope you guys liked it!


	3. Deadly Arise

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

AU

Damon and Elena

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Three: Deadly Arise  
><strong>

Elena used to think, before she lived in New York and long before she decided to ignore curfew, that nothing about Mystic Falls could surprise her.

The small town she had lived in until the age of eighteen was one of the most terrifying, unpredictable places to live with the violence of the night residents coming in ebbs and flows and so much of that violence occurring when she was in her late teens. In those last few years she had lived in Mystic Falls, it had become a place where the deadly arose only minutes after curfew, where it wasn't uncommon for hikers, who had ignored the warnings to be inside by sundown, to be found violently murdered every two, maybe three days.

She remembers; curled onto her side on the huge bed Damon had left her in minutes, maybe hours, earlier, how that violence had taken her best friend from her when she was only seventeen.

She remembers too, that they had blamed the man who she had awoken to find in the shadows.

Damon Salvatore, it has been whispered, had been the person who had torn open the throat of Caroline Forbes and then, in a twist of fate afforded to so few, had turned her into one of those the town feared.

She knows now that Mystic Falls has just thrown a curveball at her that's caught her in the stomach, knocked the breath from her lungs and her feet from under her.

Damon Salvatore isn't just the reason she lost her best friend when she was seventeen nor is he just one of the reasons she got the hell out of Mystic Falls when she turned eighteen and was accepted into NYU.

Damon Salvatore is the legend behind the town of Mystic Falls, the legend behind curfew and the murders of townspeople and an almost massacre of the founding families. He's the vicious vampire, who was turned in 1864 and had stayed to haunt the town, turning those when he felt like it and then allowing them to roam free in the town after sunset.

And for twenty, nearly twenty-one, years, Elena's believed that he was simply a legend.

Apparently, that isn't true.

Apparently, Damon Salvatore exists.

Apparently, not only does Damon Salvatore exist but, in an action so contrary to the legend, he saved her from the monster whose hand she can still faintly feel around her throat.

Lying on that bed, facing the windows, her eyes tracing the moonlight that's lovingly outlining the gnarled branches of an sturdy oak tree, Elena's not exactly sure how to process the information her mind is sorting through simply because there so much of it her mind wants to reject.

In the fashion of a student of history, her mind is demanding more than proof. It wants the legend, word for word, in detail and not a vague recollection of it from a parent some ten, twelve years ago. It also wants the evidence that backs the legend, the small sliver of information that started a legend spanning a hundred and forty-five years and it's demanding proof that the man she had woken up to was, truly, Damon Salvatore in the flesh.

But that's only one part of what her mind is asking.

Her mind, the ever curious mind that led her to being a history major, is asking about the supernatural. It's asking how she could possibly believe that Damon Salvatore is who he says he is and how only after accepting it a moment ago, she accepted that not only is he Damon Salvatore but he's also a vampire.

The second part to that question, Elena muses, is quite easy. She believes he's a vampire simply because while everyone else in the world needs an action, a specimen of experimentation to prove that the supernatural exists, she needs the opposite.

To believe in the supernatural – vampires, witches, and werewolves – is as natural as knowing that she has to look both ways when crossing the road. It's a sliver of information drilled into the head of every child raised in Mystic Falls and it never truly leaves their psyche. Elena knows because even though she was living in New York, even though living there had relaxed her enough for it to only be a passing thought, the lessons of childhood had ever really left her. The belief in the fantastical beings so many assumed where simply myths, she knows, will never really leave her.

To not believe in the supernatural, Elena knows, someone would have to disprove the hauntings of Mystic Falls. They would have to capture the specimen of experimentation that would prove to the world that they existed and use it to prove that Mystic Falls needn't have lived in terror for a hundred and forty-five years.

And because she knows all of _that's_ never going to happen, Elena knows that the man who had been in the room with her was, in fact, a vampire.

If he was Damon Salvatore, well, she's not sure.

Huffing because she feels like her mind is going around in circles, she moves, pushing over to settle on her back and stare up at the shadowed ceiling.

Irritation at herself is slowly starting to well and chip away at the disbelief that's been coating her since Damon – if it _was_ Damon – had shut the door earlier.

She's irritated because, logically, she should be terrified. She has no idea what he has planned for her, she's not sure if she's ever going to leave this room again or if she's to be the next meal for the vampire who had left her in a state of disarray.

Instead, she's attempting to figure out if the man who had left her room was in fact, Damon Salvatore.

There must be something wrong with her, she decides, because no-one in their right mind spends time wondering if their captor is who he says he is.

Then again, Elena thinks, maybe she's just trying to distract herself from the uncertainty of the coming hours.

As her eyes adjust to faded light that's making the intricately designed seem shadowed and slightly intimidating, Elena wonders if maybe she's just curious.

It makes sense.

Contemplatively, Elena allows the face of the man to float into her mind and finds herself appreciating the memory of the five o'clock shadow, the smirk twisted to sit on just this side of smug, the incredible blue eyes that were watching her carefully.

With a soft sigh, Elena turns over again, returning to her side.

Those eyes, she thinks drowsily. They were so blue, so deep, almost fathomless and so utterly familiar.

She's sure as she slowly drifts towards a sleep that she hadn't known was coming; that she's seen those eyes before. That those eyes have smiled at her before and she's been just as curious about them as she is now.

She's sure of it as she begins to dream.

* * *

><p><em>The fog has come from nowhere. <em>

_At nine, with an almost pure belief in everything her parents have ever told her, Elena knows that the fog isn't a good thing. In fact, she's sure that it's a very bad thing. _

_But this fog is different. _

_It's daytime and curfew, she's sure, isn't for a few more hours. She knows because she promised her parents that she and Caroline would be careful to be home from the edge of the woods well before the bell rang in warning and the deadly chose to arise._

_The fog, she knows, only comes after curfew and it only comes a few times every month. It never, _ever _comes during the day, though. _

_Biting her lip, Elena steps forward and hears a branch crunch beneath her worn sneakers. _

_Maybe, she thinks, as she looks around at the swirling grey, playing hide and seek hadn't been a very good idea, especially when she's the one hiding. Caroline, she knows, isn't a very patient seeker and she's been known to give up when all the obvious places have been discovered._

_Her hiding place isn't exactly obvious but it isn't a hard place, either. She's standing behind a wall of rock that she's sure has been used before and then realizes that in fog this thick, her friends not going to be able to find the rocks, let alone her._

_Taking a deep breath, Elena somehow knows that she needs to step away from the rocks and find her way back to her friend. _

"_Caroline?"_

_Another branch crunches under her shoes and the sound echoes sharply and Elena draws in a deep breath, thinking about running but not being sure where to run too. _

_No-one's ever told her what to do when fog comes up so suddenly. She's pretty sure even the big kids don't know what to do._

_Carefully, she takes another step and calls out for her friend again. _

"_Caroline? Can you hear me?"_

_Taking another step away from the rocks and looking around carefully, Elena wonders if she's going to see anyone around her. _

_Serious thoughts of running start to demand attention and she draws in a deep, terrified breath and cautiously takes another step only to hear a branch crack behind her._

_She wheels around at the sound, her heart hammering, knowing that the branch cracking hadn't come from beneath her shoe again._

_Standing behind her, leaning nonchalantly against the rocks she had been hiding behind stood a man dressed all in black. He's watching her carefully and his eyes flick to behind her momentarily before returning to her own. _

_She opens her mouth, vague thoughts of screaming echoing inside her head when he raises a finger to his lips and shakes his head._

_Numbly, she does what she's told because it never occurs for her to do otherwise. _

_His eye – blue, Elena notes, really, really blue – flick behind her again and his lips twist into a sneer as another branch snaps behind her and the echo races through the forest. _

_His eyes flick back to hers and it doesn't take a genius for Elena to realize he wants her to stay put. She's not a genius but she is one of the smartest people in her whole year and though he doesn't explicitly indicate to, she squeezes her eyes shut, too, and doesn't move._

_In a matter of seconds, she hears a sickening crunch and she knows that it isn't from someone standing on a branch. She's not sure what it's from but she doesn't want to open her eyes and find out so she keeps them squeezed shut and tries to listen instead._

_There's not much more to hear, though and she starts thinking about opening her eyes when she hears a voice, one she's sure doesn't belong to the man who had been standing in front of her before._

"_She smells so pure. Tell me you don't smell it." _

_The voice is cold and ruthless and she wonders, only briefly, what he's talking about but hears nothing else as the other man growls out something that's in a different language. _

_It sounds a little bit like a curse word and Elena wants to giggle at it but she doesn't because she knows the man in black wants her to stay still and she will because she thinks he's trying to help her. _

"_There's a reason we're known as night creatures. We _don't_ come out during the day."_

_The other man says lowly, almost like he doesn't want her to hear and then there's one more thud, the crack of branch being snapped in half and then another curiously sickening crunch before only absolute silence._

_Elena stands there for only a moment longer before she becomes curious about what's happened and why she's starting to feel the warmth of the sun on her face again. _

_Opening her eyes in curiosity, the man in black is standing in front of her again and he looks a little irritated. Kind of like what her Daddy looks like when he has to keep explaining himself over and over before she understands it. He looked like that this morning, she remembers, when he had to explain to her why it was a bad idea for her to stay over at Caroline's tonight. _

_Something about her being special, but she doesn't really remember._

"_I would advise you against playing in the woods from now on." He says before she can ask anything or even turn around and she blinks._

"_Why?"_

"_Because, apparently, you're all nitwits who aren't aware some of us can walk at midday."_

_Elena frowns a little at that. She doesn't think she's a nitwit. In fact, she knows she's not and glares up at him. "I'm not a nitwit. I'm the third smartest person in my grade."_

_For a moment, the man stares at her and then he chuckles, his smile reaching his eyes and making them even bluer then before._

"_I suppose I'll have to remember that." He says and she nods once, imperiously before gracing him with an impish grin._

"_Who are you?" She asks curiously and his eyebrows rise only slightly at the question._

_Before he can reply, though, Elena hears a crunch of leaves and Caroline's worried voice calling out for her._

"_Elena! Where are you? Your Daddy's worried!"_

_Instinctively, Elena turns in the direction of her friend's voice before glancing behind her. The man who had been standing in front of her before is gone. _

_Frowning, Elena stares at the spot where he once stood and then jumps when she hears her father's frantic voice. He hadn't answered her question and she wonders why. She wonders, narrowing her gaze at the spot he had been standing, who that man was and why he had made her stand still for those few seconds she'd been surrounded by fog._

_Before she can think further on it or even come up with a reasonable explanation for it, Elena hears her daddy's voice and discovers, curiously, that the sound of it makes her knees shake in relief._

_She looks down at them and can't help but wonder when she felt scared in the last few minutes._

"_Elena Gilbert! Where are you?"_

_With one last curious thought about the man who had told her to stay quiet and stand still and what he had done or even meant, Elena turns and runs in the direction of their voices._

_Deciding that it's probably wise not to tell her father exactly what had just happened near the rocks during the day. He worries, she knows, enough as it is._

"_Daddy, I'm here!"_

* * *

><p>He's standing near those rocks as he remembers the gangly little girl with skinny legs much too long for her age and hair down to her waist and connects her to the girl he left in his bedroom nearly an hour ago.<p>

He'd given no thought to staking that vampire behind the little girl with knobbly knees twelve years ago simply because it had to be done.

Both to save the life of the girl who had stood in front of him and complied so easily to the demands he had communicated too her and to save one of the only food sources Mystic Falls could supply to him and the rest of the supernatural population.

God bless hikers who didn't believe in the supernatural or frighteningly consistent animal attacks, Damon thinks with a smirk as he picks up the sounds of a small camp only a few hundred feet from where he's standing.

The hikers were going to be his dinner when he had realized exactly where he was standing.

The memory, Damon considers, isn't important because he chose to kill one of his kind. No, the memory is important because Elena Gilbert is involved with it and in both the memory and the events a few hours ago, she had smelled pure.

Damon wonders how he hasn't picked that memory straight away based simply on the claim of how pure she smelled and then realizes that in both, he was too busy saving her life to really appreciate he scent that wafted from her.

But it's enough to wonder about and enough to consider, exactly, how he has ended up saving that girl again.

If he was younger, perhaps if he hadn't lived for a hundred and forty-five years, Damon knows he might not believe in coincidence.

It _might_ be a coincidence that he has ended up saving that girls life twice. It _might_ be a coincidence that it's occurred in roughly the same way. It _might_ be a coincidence that both vampires who had been intent on attacking her told him about the way her blood smelled.

It might also be a coincidence that Caroline Forbes has appeared both times after the danger has passed.

The thought causes Damon to wince slightly because he knows without a shadow of a doubt that when he returns, she will be waiting to lecture him. On one of the many faults she has discovered in the last few years that she doesn't approve of.

The momentary distraction doesn't stop his mind from continuing to mull over the sudden coincidences that have presented themselves and Damon finds that maybe it's not a coincidence.

He would like to believe that twice saving this girl is just a coincidence and that he will leave her locked in that room until the sun rose before letting her go and never thinking of her again but, somehow, he doesn't think that there's much coincidence in it.

Somehow, he doesn't think someone whose scent was so pure could fall into his path twice in _their_ lifetime without something else being at work and he'd rather know for sure then assume the hands of fate are screwing with him.

The sounds of laughter break his concentration momentarily and he flicks a glance towards the oblivious hikers. For a moment, he considers feeding – knowing that it had been his intention when he left the Boarding House – and then dismisses the idea.

The memory has unsettled him and he needs to know whether or not it's a coincidence before he decides what to do with the girl in his room.

Turning his back on the cheerful hikers, Damon slips back into the shadows, deciding that tomorrow night one of the other deadly arising after curfew can teach them why it's a bad idea to be out of Mystic Falls at night.

His lesson plan tonight has changed.

Now, he thinks, it's time to visit some witches.

* * *

><p>AN:...so, interesting? My muse deserted me for a while after the second chapter. Not in regards to the whole story but in regards to this chapter. I couldn't figure out how to link it all up and this became quite a transitional chapter for the story because we explain Elena's thinking, Damon's as well and well, we're going to visit witches next. That being said, it _is_ a transitional chapter into the story and the start of the storyline in regards to these two, so it's going to be fun to play around with it in the coming chapters, I hope you enjoyed it!

To everyone that reviewed, thank you! It's really awesome to hear from all of you, I really enjoy reading them!

Special mention to mchriste22, though, because I'm so glad you've got _Bat Out of Hell_ in your head when you're reading this and I have to say, there are so many lines in the song I love - title included - but 'Oh baby, you're the only thing in this whole world that's pure and good and right' is what stuck in my head when I came up with the plotline!

I hope you guys did enjoy chapter three and, once again, thank you for the reviews!

_Cautiously, she takes another step and hears a branch crack from behind her. _


	4. Only Thing in This Whole World

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

AU

Damon and Elena.

This is an **M **story. Read at your own discretion.

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Four: Only Thing in This Whole World**

Going to see the witches always sounds more ominous then it actually is and, as he drives, Damon entertains himself with the thought that they _are_ the terrifying idea that people had created of them so long ago, who rode broomsticks and entertained themselves by cursing those that crossed them.

They're not, obviously, but the image of Sheila Bennet on a broomstick entertains him endlessly as he manoeuvres his blue Camaro through the quiet streets of Mystic Falls.

Idly, Damon glances out to his left and raises an eyebrow as he sees the curtain of a tightly locked house flutter at the sight of his car.

The residents of Mystic Falls may be scared shitless of the night that wraps itself around their cosy little town but most of them are damn curious about what happens at night and who roams the streets.

Some can't even help themselves when they hear a car drive past.

Even though they're terrified and curious about what happens, Damon wonders if they are even aware that the vampires they so desperately try and preserve themselves from are only a fraction of the supernatural population of this town.

He highly doubts it.

He supposes that if the people of Mystic Falls knew about the witches he was going to pay a visit too, the witches he needed to see wouldn't be living in the small house protected by much more than simple vampire etiquette.

Humans, he knew, were afraid to touch vampires because most knew too much about how they operated and mostly, humans tended to want to keep their necks intact.

Witches were a different matter, persecution has reigned supreme over them before and Damon has no doubt that if some key members of Mystic Falls' council found out about them, the fear of the night would be taken out solely on two witches he liked having around.

He like having them around not just because Sheila Bennet and her niece, Bonnie, were both powerful witches in their own right but because there were some things he needed to know that they only knew and shared when he asked at the opportune moment.

Now, he knows, is an opportune moment.

There are too many coincidences which have happened in the past few hours for him to not need to know, fully, what is going on.

There's also the fact that there's a girl asleep in his room that the more he thinks about her, the more curious he becomes.

Elena Gilbert, he tests out quietly in his head.

Elena Gilbert, a member of one of the founding families, a daughter no less and a girl who's blood smells so pure, it attracts the unwanted attention of some of his kind. There's something about that piece of information that's niggling in the back of his mind, some memory from his human years that he can't quite grasp.

Shaking his head, Damon dismisses that niggling memory and instead focuses back on the girl he's spent more time then he considers being wise.

She's also, apparently, Caroline's best friend and currently, the sole, possibly unwilling, resident of his bedroom. Christ, he can almost see her curled onto her side in his big, hand carved bed, her hand pillowing her serene, softly smiling face and that long tangle of ebony hair falling negligently over one uncovered shoulder.

She would look beautiful, he thinks.

Damon finds his eyes narrowing at the involuntary thought. It's been a very long time since he's considered someone truly beautiful. Longer still since he's considered someone to be beautiful in such an innocent way.

A hundred and forty-five years, he thinks suddenly, it's been a hundred and forty-five years since he's considered someone to be beautiful in that way.

Unbidden, the image of a girl with the same dark as Elena, curled in the same position he imagined her to be in, rises in front of him. He thinks for a second that he's seeing Elena and then realizes that he's not. Her features are not as sharp, her skin more porcelain then olive, her mouth a little fuller then Elena's.

It takes only a second for him to realize that it's a memory he's seeing, a memory that makes him feel warm with nostalgia for a few moments and then the feeling is pushed aside as he's assaulted by the pure smell that is so much stronger then Elena's.

The second the smell hits him, it fades and the image of the sleeping girl vanishes with it.

Damon wants to curse and is grateful that there's not a whole lot of traffic in Mystic Falls during the night. Otherwise, he's sure; he would be causing the only traffic jam Mystic Falls has ever seen.

It doesn't make him shaky that the memory, if it _is_ a memory, has caused him to slam on the brakes and stall his car in the middle of the road but more determined to know what the _hell_ is going on.

His fingers beginning to tap the steering wheel, a habit that he acquires only when he's attempting to connect dots, as he restarts the Camaro, determined now, to get answers from the witches he's sure know something about these coincidences.

It doesn't take him long to reach the friendly house sitting at the very of a street boarded up so tightly, Damon has no doubt that it's one of the original streets in the town.

The witches house is sitting without it's blinds closed and, he's sure, the door is unlocked because, unlike other residents of Mystic Falls, the people who live in that house know damn well how to protect themselves from him.

Witches are, after all, one of the few supernatural entities who have any real power against them.

Though he knows he should be cautious about approaching this house, Damon's also very aware that Sheila Bennet knows he's coming and is prepared.

Her granddaughter is the one he has a feeling that he should watch out for. Bonnie Bennet is not his greatest fan and he has a feeling that if she finds out exactly why he's decided to pay them a visit, she's going to hate him all the more.

There's nothing like facing off a new witch whose concept of the supernatural is still so irritatingly written in black and white that they often fail to see the real reason those closest to them allow him into their lives.

Bonnie, he knows, tries to take that one step farther because her grandmother has yet to let her in on the secret of her heritage.

He often wonders if Sheila will let him be there when Bonnie discovers why her grandmother is _so_ accommodating with him.

Before his thoughts can go any further, the door swings open before his foot can touch the bottom step of the porch and Sheila steps out, her head held high and her brown eyes cast down to meet his head on.

There's not much Damon respects anymore but this witch, standing on her porch, swathed in soft grey wool and emanating the kind of calm, controlled power he knows comes from years of practicing a craft that has so many more complicated rules then anyone knows, is one of the few people who he gives his respect willingly.

"Damon." Sheila greets him, her voice quiet and little husky, and her eyes never wavering from his.

"Sheila. Long time, no see."

He inclines his head only slightly and glances behind her to see Bonnie framed by the doorway; her long, chocolate hair pulled back and her mouth set in a frown as eyes similar to her grandmother's glare at him from her safe position.

He thinks, idly, that the younger Bennet witch has always had crazy eyes.

"You've come about the girl." Sheila draws his attention back to her and he nods once.

"On the ball as usual, Sheila."

She narrows her eyes only slightly, a glimmer of amusement shining bright before being snuffed out by her granddaughter stepping out onto the porch with her.

"What girl?" Bonnie demands and he raises an eyebrow.

"None that concern you, Little Miss Nosy." Damon snaps and Sheila places a hand on her granddaughter's arm, an eloquent look of warning passing over him.

"It concerns me, vampire, when you're talking about people I know."

"Bonnie, go back into the house." Sheila intervenes sharply before he can retort and Bonnie looks like she wants to argue before she nods, walking slowly back into through the open door with a pointed glare aimed solely at him.

"You should train your guard dog better, Sheila. She jumps at any invitation."

Sheila only raises an eyebrow. "You should know better than to provoke a witch, Damon. Especially when you've come alone. I can only prevent her from doing nothing for so long."

He considers her words for a moment before shrugging. "The girl. That's why I'm here."

Sheila eyes him and then smiles thinly. "I am bound to tell you little, Damon. We are secretive for a reason and the motives of those who cast a spell based on coincidence are hidden, often from her sisters."

Respect, solely, keeps him from reacting irrationally to her words. Iron will keeps his voice from wavering from a tone of curiosity and the combination of both keeps his eyes steady on Sheila's slightly amused ones.

"So you can tell me nothing, then."

Sheila considers him for a moment, as if weighing something in her mind, though her eyes show nothing but the slight amusement of before and then she sighs.

"I am bound to this by my ancestor Damon, you know this. You know too, she is the only thing in this whole world that will set you free from this place."

He waves his hand impatiently at her words. "Obviously, but you seriously can't give me a _clue_? Even Miss Scarlett in the Study had a freaking clue."

"Always impatient," Sheila laughs only a little at his words then, closing her eyes, she draws in a deep breath and, in a voice soft with respect, begins to recite something he vaguely remembers hearing years ago. "_Thrice they shall be saved. Two entities intertwined by fate's hand, one the only thing in this world that will give love boundless until forgiveness from the other is asked for_."

Damon feels only the whisper of a power older then Sheila whisper over him as those words wash over him and he forgets to be cool. He's heard those words before, back when they were said as an explanation – or was it a spell? – and the need to punish was in the forefront of another witches mind.

He's heard them before, so he's sure that they're only a fragment of the explanation he's looking for in regards to Elena Gilbert.

Sheila is watching him shrewdly when his eyes return to hers and she inclines her head only slightly at the question in them.

"There is more but that, Damon, you must discover for yourself."

She doesn't move quickly but Damon finds himself alone in front of the cheerful witches house, his mind full of an almost memory triggered by the excerpt Sheila has just treated him too.

She has given him something to think about but something he should think about when the sun is high in the sky and definitely something to think about when Elena Gilbert isn't sitting in his room.

Turning back to his car, he wonders if Elena has an idea of what Sheila's terrible clue means and then figures it can't hurt to find out.

Especially if she's the only thing in this whole world that's going to free him from this town.

* * *

><p>She rolls on top of him, her fingers twining tightly with his even as she sinks down onto him, a breathless moan erupting as she begins to rock and he moves with her, setting a rhythm and enjoying the slowly building burn low in his gut as she leans down to kiss him.<p>

Their mouths tangle in a familiar dance as her blond curls curtain their faces and her grip on his hands tighten as her breath hitches in a sound he knows means she's about to come and he thrusts up once, hard, and is rewarded by her tearing her mouth from his to whimper out his name as she tightens around him.

"_Stefan_."

The slowly building burn erupts into white hot flame the second his name falls from her lips and he lets out a guttural groan that could be taken for her name but he knows it's not when she giggles drunkenly as she slides, boneless, down his body so she can settle her head in the curve of his neck.

He gently untangles his fingers from hers as she sighs comfortably, wiggling only slightly when he slides one hand down the length of her body to settle on her hip while the other strokes back the blond curls that have stuck to her forehead earlier.

Silence overtakes them and he relishes it for a moment, pulling his thoughts together as he continues to absently stroke the blond curls that are tangled beneath his fingers.

He knows that he needs to explain to her why he attacked someone she considers to be her best friend earlier and he knows, too, that she will accept his explanation unfailingly though he doesn't doubt that an apology will go astray either.

Caroline, he knows, will be thinking about how her best friend could have ended up like her and he doesn't blame her but he knows, too, that he will apologize for losing control but apologizing for attacking Elena Gilbert is something he won't do simply because Caroline will take his apology for attacking Elena and use it to soothe the wound he left when he attacked her three, nearly four, years ago.

And apologizing for finding his eternal mate is not something he thinks he can do.

He supposes that he should apologize to _Elena_ for attacking her but knows that the words are easier said to Caroline, who accepts the flaws he fights every time he leaves the house at night with his brother.

Stefan furrows his brow slightly as he wonders if it will be possible to apologize to Elena for attacking her _without_ Caroline hearing before he realizes that the silence they'd fallen into has stretched longer then he figures the blond can stand.

Glancing down, he wonders if she's asleep. Then he hears the sniffle.

"Car?" He asks softly. She sniffled again and he hates the funny feeling he gets in his stomach at the sad sound. "Caroline?"

She resolutely keeps her head down even as he begins to stroke her hair again gently, the hand on her hip sliding off find the hand she has splayed on his chest and intertwining their fingers even as he feels a solitary tear drop onto his skin.

"Caroline, look at me."

He really thinks for a moment that she's going to dig her face deeper into his neck when he speaks, the way she used too when Damon demanded to know how she could have made a stupid mistake and she didn't know she could stand up to his brother or him, for that matter.

She doesn't though; she tilts her head and meets his gaze, her blue eyes more brilliant because of the tears she's trying so hard not to shed.

"What's wrong?" He asks, though he's got a pretty good idea of what's going through her head.

"Do you think she remembers me?"

He smiles softly at her tiny, insecure voice. "Of course she does. How could she forget you?"

Caroline bites her lip at his words and he can see the wheels in her mind spinning and he knows what's about to come.

"Do you think he's going to kill me if I go and see her?"

"Probably."

She eyes him and he makes a face at her reaction the dry tone of his voice. Those blue eyes he adores start to glimmer with more than tears now.

"How willing are you to really piss him off, tonight?" She asks conversationally and he shrugs.

"You mean anymore then I already have?"

"Exactly."

He considers her question, his thumb beginning to rub circles on the back of her hand and chooses to ignore her involuntary shudder at his action.

Then he looks at her earnest face and knows he's screwed.

Stefan knows he will face the wrath of his brother and the lectures from Elijah millions of times over when Caroline looks at him in the earnestly, innocent, breakable way she has that makes him want to do anything she asks just so he can see the smile he loves light up her face.

"He's easier to deal with when he's really pissed, so pretty willing."

She tries to contain her squeal and fails and causes him to laugh as she props herself up and plants one, quick kiss on his lips.

"Thank you! I love you, Stefan." She says, excitement edging her voice.

"I love you, too." He replies. "Don't thank me though; you're dealing with Damon if he catches us. Elijah too."

Caroline ignores him as she jumps out of bed and he watches her, admiring her form as he realizes that maybe, going to see Elena Gilbert might not be a bad idea.

There has to be something special about her.

After all, Damon doesn't bring home human girls and lock them in his room for no reason and Stefan finds that he's curious about why he's brought her back and why Elijah was so silent before Caroline had pulled him away earlier.

He has a feeling that Caroline's best friend is more than just a random girl he chose to attack in moment of weak control.

He's got a feeling that she's much more than a random girl.

"Stefan, are you coming naked to terrorize her even more or are you going to wear pants?" Caroline demands from the foot of their bed and he rolls his eyes.

She is, possibly, the only thing in this whole world that can ask him something like that with no thought to being embarrassed.

He supposes she can ask it, though, because she _is_ his whole world.

* * *

><p>The dream unsettled her.<p>

In fact, Elena thinks, the dream unsettled her so much; she's actually considering doing this.

She's standing in front of an open window – apparently, _he_ can lock doors but not windows – and examining the study oak tree and its branches she had noticed before but never considered as a means for escape until she had woken from her dream and realizes that climbing trees was something she used to do, _all the time_.

She chooses to ignore the voice that reminds her when she was climbing trees before she was _nine_ and, often, she wasn't wearing a dress and clamps down hard on the voice that is trying to tell her she needs to think about the implications of the dream her subconscious had dredged up from some forgotten part of her mind.

Instead, she continues to examine the tree and the branch that extends towards the open window.

She can do this, she knows. She can absolutely jump onto that branch and climb down the oak and run for it.

It's not a solid plan, at all, Elena knows but she also knows she doesn't think she can stand sitting in that room any longer, trying to figure out what's going to happen to her.

Though she's always had a healthy appreciation for her imagination, Elena has never realized when left alone she could come up with so many different scenarios.

She hadn't realized, either, that the most unsettling scenarios would be the incredibly vivid ones that involve _him_ waking her with his mouth, rousing her with long, drugging kisses and callused hands sliding down to drift slowly up her thigh, catching the material of her skirt and shifting it up even as she welcomed him into the cradle of her hips, her mouth eagerly responding to his and her body becoming pliant and willing beneath his.

She hadn't realized she _could_ imagine those scenarios. While awake, anyway.

The sound of a bird squalling brings Elena back to the present and she blinks rapidly as she realizes she's allowed herself to think back on one of those scenarios and curses herself for it.

She doesn't need to be thinking about that right now. She doesn't need to be thinking about her dream either and she _really_ doesn't need to be thinking about how she could potentially kill herself by attempting to climb down a tree for the first time in twelve years.

Taking a deep breath, Elena decides she might as well take the plunge and steps out onto the barest hint of a ledge by the window.

Swallowing hard, she balances herself there for a second before reaching out and grasping the sturdy looking branch in front of her. Unlike the movies, the branch doesn't move and it isn't _just_ within reach, she can grips it tightly, easily enough.

Hoping she has the upper body strength for this, Elena reaches out her other hand and grasps the branch and with one very deep, shaky breath, she swings off the window ledge in one smooth move and then, for a second, she hangs there, doubt flashing in her mind before she starts to swing until she can manage to wrap one leg around the middle of the branch.

Using it, she pulls herself up onto the branch and releases the deep breath she'd taken before.

Ha, if I can do that, she thinks, I can climb down the rest of this stupid tree and run.

It turns out to be surprisingly simple to climb down the rest of the tree, her own confidence in her abilities and the bright moonlight aiding her as she nimbly climbs down the tree.

The second her feet touch the ground, she feels a split second of relief at having escaped the room only to have it punctured by the sound of clapping from behind her.

She spins, her heart hammering and then sinking as she's faced with the man who's saved her, _twice_, standing behind her and watching her with a sly smirk and a hard edge in his eyes.

"Bravo. I suppose you're the _only_ thing in this whole world that would consider climbing down a tree and running to be an _awesome_ escape plan, hmm?"

She glowers. She can't help it. She _hates_ it when people are condescending. Before she can formulate a blistering, instinctual reply, though, she meets his eyes and discovers, for the first time in her life, what it means to have the world stop.

His eyes, she thinks dumbly, they're so _blue_ and full of so many things she wonders if anyone has ever thought they could drown in them. It's like being hit by a wave of _everything_ and, yet, nothing because to understand everything she has to understand nothing, first. It's a primal tug low in her belly, which speaks of secrets she doesn't know, that are hidden in darkness and between his sheets. It's the danger she remembers from seeing him that first time hours ago and knowing he's dangerous not only because of _what_ he is but _who_ he is, as well.

Has anyone, she wonders numbly, ever looked into the eyes of a person and discovered so many things they've never known until right that moment?

Has anyone ever looked into someone's eyes and seen the only thing in this world?

"Elena!"

The sound of a voice so achingly familiar to her is what breaks the gaze she found herself involuntarily dragged into and Elena finds her eyes darting upwards, to the window she'd recently escaped from only to meet another pair of blue eyes framed by swinging blond curls.

She stares for only a second before her mind registers what, exactly, she's seeing and then she gasps out loud.

"Caroline?"

* * *

><p>AN: So, I originally toyed with the whole idea of having Caroline and Stefan be kind of friends with benefits and then I realized that it would be detrimental to both Caroline as a character and Stefan. Hopefully, you'll see what I mean in the coming chapters, where their relationship will be explained more fully. Besides, I like the idea of Stefan happily ensconed in a loving relationship with someone who _isn't_ Elena because, lets face it, he's tidily out of the way then and Damon and Elena can do what needs to be done. If only that would happen in the show! Anyway, I hope you guys the chapter and are even more confused about what the hells going on. Don't worry, it'll all be explained. In bits and pieces. Slowly. Though not drawn out to the point where its painful. I hope anyway. I really hope everyone liked it though!

Again, thanks for the reviews!


	5. Always Gonna Be Some Light

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

Damon and Elena.

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Five:** **Always Gonna Be Some Light**

It's not possible.

Rooted to the spot where he had stopped her only seconds ago, Elena stares up at the window she's only recently vacated and tries _so_ hard to understand what, exactly, she's seeing.

It's not possible, she thinks numbly. It's not possible that Caroline Forbes' is _alive_.

Everyone had known what happened. _Everyone_ had seen the leaked security footage of Caroline's throat being shredded to pieces and death slipping from the vibrant blue eyes that are staring down at her so excitedly right now. Everyone had mourned the vivacious blond and _everyone_ had taken it as one more warning.

_Everyone_ had accepted that she had been lost like so many others.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God." She gasps out, taking one stumbling step backwards and away from the house.

She doesn't see the way the excitement starts to drain from Caroline's eyes as the blond contemplates jumping out the window to stop her friend running away from her because she _can't_ see the possibility of Caroline being _alive_.

"Elena, wait."

Elena shakes her head violently at Caroline's plea and isn't aware that the whole of her is trembling as she continues to take stumbling steps away from the window that the girl with her friends face is leaning out of.

"No, no, no. This isn't real." She meets pleading blue eyes for a moment and shakes her head again. "You're _dead_. I – I cried over you!"

Caroline's face crumples at her words and Elena has no idea what to do. Her chest is starting to tighten as she tries to comprehend what she's seeing and can't and everything else – running for her life, the man who had stopped her, why the hell she's still alive – fades as she continues to stare up at the blond in the window.

"Elena, stop. It's real. _I'm_ real."

God, the voice. It's Caroline's voice and echoes of conversations about homecoming and boys and the uselessness of school work cause her to shake her head again and tears to start backing up her throat.

"What's going on?"

The new question, the new voice doesn't register as she takes another step away from the house and the weight of the blue gaze that had captivated her before is forgotten as she tries to figure out what to do now.

"She's - "

Elena doesn't hear Caroline's answer and for a split second, she tears her eyes away from the window and looks around wildly for an escape from the sudden twist in a nightmare that seems to be never ending.

She doesn't pay attention to the way her breathing has started to shorten as the feeling in her chest becomes tighter and she assumes the dizziness is from her mind whirling as it tries to understand what she's seeing.

"Elena." Caroline's voice pleads again and her eyes flick back up the window.

Her heart stops.

That face. She knows the face that's joined her friends in the window. She knows it because the veins that crawled across it may have been that of a nightmare but they failed to hide the features of the face.

Fear springs loose at the face and makes her heart start to hammer as the dizziness starts to take a more vicious hold on her mind as her the tightening in her chest becomes incredibly painful and her knees begin to shake more violently.

Elena gives screaming a brief, vivid thought before a shade of black too familiar to her is drawn over her mind and her knees buckle.

* * *

><p>He's contemplating who he's more pissed off as he watches the drama unfold between the girl he turned and the almost woman who's trying so hard to be brave.<p>

He's thinking that the majority of the anger is split between the blond who's staring down from his window excitedly and the brunette who'd tried to escape.

There's also a low grade urge at being pissed at his brother for inviting this mess into their lives but it's not as immediate as the urge to throttle Caroline.

He considers it for a brief moment when he hears his brothers voice chime into the rather dramatic conversation between Elena and Caroline.

His eyes flick up as Stefan's concerned face appears in the window next to Caroline's and then he glances at Elena.

She's a shade of white he's pretty sure he's never seen before and the way her body sways is enough to clue him in on the fact that she's about to go under for the second time that night.

"Elena!"

He doesn't pay attention to Caroline's cry or the way she throws herself out the window as he flashes over to catch the falling girl before she hits the ground.

She's as light as she was the first time he lifted her and she feels just as good, a slimly built, subtly curved body he knows he would appreciate very much if his mind wasn't full of witches, the thorn in his side known as his brother and the immediate problem of Caroline _not_ listening to him.

"Is she okay?"

Caroline's question comes from right in front of him and he's pleased to see that she's smart enough to shrink away from him when he lifts his murderous gaze to look her. It flicks only briefly to a remorseful looking Stefan before returning to the blond.

"There was a fucking _reason_ I said stay away from her, Barbie." He growls and Caroline swallows hard at his tone and opens her mouth. He cuts her off before she can say anything. "Not one fucking word, Caroline, or I'll rip your heart out and shove it down your throat."

She snaps her mouth shut and, adjusting the girl in his arms, he stalks back into the house unsure of what, exactly, is his next move.

Instead of heading back to his room and tying her to the bed until the sunrise, he takes her into the parlour and settles her on the couch, knowing that she probably won't be out for any longer than a few minutes.

As he straightens, his mind is already on pouring himself a stiff drink when he glances down and finds himself suddenly, inordinately occupied with the sweep of hair that's fallen over her face and the urge to reach down and push it away.

Cocking his head slightly, Damon idly wonders if there's any point in resisting the urge and then finds the thought of resisting overridden simply by the urge to do it.

His movements guided by the urge, Damon allows himself to crouch down beside her, his hand reaching to push the hair behind her ear, his fingers trailing along the smooth skin of her cheek as he slides her curtain of ebony back.

There's something familiar about the movement, something that niggles at the back of his mind and tells him he's done it before and derived pleasure from revealing the beautiful face to him.

_Her skin reminds him of porcelain and is smooth as silk to touch. The smile that tilts at the soft lips he's tasted is instinctive at the touch of his fingers to her skin. Her eyelids begin to flutter and he waits for her dreamy gaze to focus upon him._

Damon blinks.

Then blinks again as he tries to figure out where the hell that image had come from. It's a memory, he thinks, it _has_ to be a memory because he's sure he's never met that women before in his life.

He shakes his head only slightly before looking back at Elena and watching as her eyelids start to flutter. Patiently, he watches her open her eyes and meet his gaze, the brown of them fathomless as she looks at him.

It's there this time, too.

Whatever the hell had passed between them outside before Caroline had appeared was just _there _when Elena opened her eyes and met his own.

It makes him uncomfortable to think about whatever it is because it's as huge as thinking she's beautiful for the first time in a hundred and forty-five years and as small as a grain of sand. It's a connection that's intrinsic and only because minutes ago when he looked at her, she _really_ looked at him.

Elena makes a small noise in the back of her throat and he realizes, suddenly, that his thumb is stroking soothingly across her cheek, sweeping along her cheek bone steadily.

The small noise is enough to break whatever spell he's under and he's as far away from her as he can get when he sees her blink next.

She stares at him for only a second longer before pushing herself up into a sitting position. Color is fast returning to her cheeks and he's got a feeling that as long as Caroline and Stefan don't make another appearance, she'll be okay.

That doesn't mean, though, that _he'll_ be okay in her company. He's not sure why he wouldn't be okay but only knows – given all the wonderfully cryptic information he's gathered so far – that this girl is not like the countless others he's been left alone with.

So he pours himself a drink and decides to make conversation.

"Reunion etiquette one-oh-one, fainting is not ideal when reunited with those we love."

He hides a smirk in his glass of bourbon when he discovers that she's recovering well enough to send him a scathing look.

"Mystic Falls Survival Rule number one, those who appear after death surely aren't good for our health." She spits back at him and he can tell, though her colors coming back rapidly and she isn't afraid of sending him one heated glare, that she's shaken by what's happened.

He's sort of amused that she seems more shaken by the reappearance of a high school friend then finding out who she's currently keeping company with.

"If it's any consolation at all, I did tell her to stay away from you, Elena." He uses her name carelessly, forgetting that she doesn't know he knows who she is and is reminded of it when her eyes narrow suspiciously.

"How do you know who I am?"

He rolls his eyes at the question. "Caroline. Who do you think?"

She goes quiet for a moment at his snapped reply and he indulges himself by draining his tumbler and refilling it.

"So, she's a…"

He forces himself not to roll his eyes again at her unasked question and turns back to her; with what he likes to think is a charming smile on his face.

"Vampire? Obviously."

She nods once and then swings her legs off the couch, so her feet are on the floor and her hands are fiddling with the hem of the white summer dress she's wearing.

Damon lets the silence hang because he's considering raising the subject of witches and spells with her before she looks up at him, frowning.

"I didn't faint because I saw Caroline. I fainted because the guy who attacked me was standing behind her."

He _really_ doesn't want to find it attractive in the slightest that she's decided to correct him on the reason she fainted in the first place because he's got a feeling finding anything but the surface of her attractive is going to land him in a position he's never been in before.

"Okay."

For whatever reason, his noncommittal answer seems to spur a further explanation from her and he can't help but find that slightly amusing.

"I mean, it's not that she wasn't a part of it but I don't think I would have fainted if it had _just_ been Caroline, you know? It's just because he attacked me, I think and seeing his face…surprised me."

She's fiddling with the hem of her skirt as she speaks, her eyes trained on the hem as he takes a thoughtful sip of his drink at her words and wonders if she's aware of how fearless that statement sounded and how relatively stupid it was that she fainted because his brother's face had surprised her.

It makes him wonder if she knows she's not really afraid to be here.

"You're not really afraid to be here, are you Elena?"

The question causes her eyes to snap up and meet his. Bewilderment, a little resentment and disbelief color her expression and then she rolls her eyes.

"No, of course not. I decided to climb down a tree and run for my life for _fun_." She snaps at him sarcastically and he chuckles.

He laughs because her comment has genuinely amused him and he watches as she blinks in surprise at his reaction. Placing his drink down on the drink cart, he folds his arms and cocks his head a little, his smirk only a small quirk to his mouth as her eyes narrow at him.

"No, see, I don't think you're actually afraid. Want to know why?"

"Is there anything I can do that will stop you from telling me?" She shoots back, only a little snidely and he wonders if he can scare her.

It's a split second decision that has him flashing over to her, leaning down, his face so close to hers he can feel her breath on his cheek, his hands resting on the back of the couch and his body pushing hers back, deep into the couch.

There's a small amount of satisfaction in hearing how her heart speeds up at his closeness, an even smaller amount at feeling her breathing quicken against his cheek. But what satisfies him greatly is the fact when he meets her eyes; her gaze is steady and only curious. Fear, if she has any, isn't reserved for him.

"You're not afraid of being here, Elena, because you're not afraid of _me_." He murmurs, watching her eyes darken only slightly at his words.

She waits for only a beat before she replies, leaning forward slightly and bringing herself even closer to him, their mouth aligning almost exactly right as she continues to hold his gaze.

"Why should I be afraid of you? You've saved me twice now, Damon."

She doesn't hesitate when using his name and the way she says it, only a hint of uncertainty makes him shift so his body is closer to hers then before. Her mouth is still aligned with his and her gaze is still steady and he wonders if that's a combination he's going to be able to resist a few minutes, maybe seconds from now.

"Are you sure you're not afraid of me, Elena? So many would be." His voice is low and languid when he speaks, almost like he's switched from trying to frighten her to a half-hearted attempt at seducing her.

Her breathing hitches at the tone and her gaze wavers, a tinge of shyness suddenly lighting her steady gaze and leaving him _knowing_ that the half-hearted attempt at seducing her is about to become fully blown.

"Maybe they're afraid of you for a different reason then I should be." Her voice is shaky, her tone only a little shy but her gaze is as steady as ever and he finds that there's something incredibly sexy about that combination.

"Maybe you're right." He agrees huskily and her eyes darken dramatically as he leans closer, all but tasting the mouth that's so close to his.

Her eyes are starting to drift as she tilts her head only a little to offer the taste and he thinks, for a brief second, that maybe this is a bad idea and then decides he doesn't really care. At some point during this conversation, a need to taste her has started to unfurl in his stomach and he sees no point in refusing that need.

That is until someone speaks his name.

* * *

><p>God, she's waiting in near desperation for his kiss.<p>

She knows that it's probably the stupidest move on her part she could make and somewhere, her mind is asking her how she's gone from stumbling backwards in horror at the sight of her best friend to almost needing the kiss of the man leaning over her.

That is until they both hear his name.

"Damon."

Whatever tenuous spell they were both under is broken immediately at the appearance of the dark haired man in the doorway with the foreign accent. Damon pushes away from her, taking a few steps away and exhaling one deep breath, his attention turning towards the man in the doorway.

Nervously, Elena pushes herself up so she's sitting straighter and finds herself looking at the man in the doorway as well, who is studying her thoughtfully.

"I thought she was in your room." He comments and Damon shrugs.

"She was. She decided it would be fun to climb down the tree outside my room and run for it."

"Ah." The man steps into the room, his gaze flicking. "Are you aware of who she is?"

"Are you?" Damon shoots back and Elena crosses her arms.

There are many things she despises but one of them is when people speak about her as if she's not there. It's happened so often in her life that it doesn't irritate her anymore, it makes her truly angry.

"Are you both aware _she _is right here?" She snaps out and ignores the way her stomach jumps at Damon's smirk.

The other man looks startled at her interruption before recovering only offering her a practiced smile that makes her frown back at him.

"I apologize. I am Elijah." He tips his head down a little as her introduces himself and she nods once.

"I'm Elena." Then her frown deepens as she remembers what he's said. "Who am I?" She asks and Elijah looks startled at the question before recovering smoothly.

"Why, you are Elena, of course."

She narrows her eyes at him and then turns them onto Damon, who's watching her steadily now. The blue gaze is enough to make her pulse jump and she squares her shoulders a little, meeting Elijah's gaze.

"I know who I am but who am I to you?" She demands.

"I suppose you're the light." Elijah replies, as if he's doing her a favour and not providing her with a ridiculously cryptic clue about who she is.

"Clever. You know what my name means." She snaps and Elijah arches one eyebrow delicately.

"Miss Elena, forgive me for asking, but you are well aware of who you're speaking to and what we are, correct?"

She narrows her eyes. "Of course. I just had this conversation with Damon. Now what were you speaking about?"

Elijah glances at Damon and she watches as a whole conversation seems to pass between them without a word being spoken and deduces that the two men in front of her know each other very well.

"You probably won't believe me when I say to you that as long as you're around, Elena, there's always going to be some light."

She stares. "What?"

"I thought so." Elijah smiles only a little at her blank response. "Let me repeat something to you, something I found intriguing only earlier tonight. Would you like to hear it?"

Elena finds herself looking at him warily, suddenly getting the feeling that the conversation she'd interrupted was about much more then who she is and not quite understanding why it suddenly seems like such a large deal.

She risks a glance at Damon, who is seemingly standing there, waiting for her to answer and then turns her attention back to Elijah.

"Alright." She agrees cautiously.

"I believe the fragment I recovered says '_Wherever she is and wherever she goes, light will always be with her._' I wonder, Elena, what that could possibly mean." Elijah seems comfortable parting with the knowledge and Elena frowns, a little.

She's quiet as she tries to think of what that fragment could possibly mean and misses the venomous look Damon shoots Elijah who simply shrugs.

"She is a part of it, Damon, if that is any indication."

Elena looks up at the words, her mind still ticking over as she tries to figure out all the different angles she could look at Elijah's words from.

It doesn't occur to her that she hasn't given Caroline a thought since Damon had leaned over her nor does it bother her overmuch because she's got a feeling to think about Caroline, let alone face her again, will push her out of her comfort zone much too fast.

It's easier, Elena knows, to not think about the Caroline thing and instead concentrate on what the hell is going on around her.

"What am I a part of?" She asks, almost distractedly as she continues to think about possibilities involving Elijah's words.

Elijah doesn't reply, instead Damon does and she finds her eyes drawn back to him the second she realizes he's the one going to speak.

He's eyeing her thoughtfully and she can see something forming in his mind, some plan that involves her and she suddenly wonders why her question should have the wheels in Damon's head spinning so effectively.

Before she can ask, again, he smirks.

"Maybe, Elena, you should do what you do best and figure it out."

* * *

><p>AN: Well, an update! I actually didn't realize how long its been since I updated last, so sorry! Anyway, some Damon and Elena action and Elena's reaction to Caroline. Don't worry, Caroline and Elena will have a conversation - without Stefan - sometime in the next couple of chapters, I just didn't think it would have been very realistic for Elena to start jumping up and down in excitement when the friend she thought was dead is actually kind of alive. Anyway, I hope you guys liked the chapter and are still confused over what's happening but don't worry, now the Damon's putting Elena on the case of figuring it out, I think it's going to move along a lot more quickly now! I hope, anyway. I hope you guys liked it, anyway, let me know!

Thanks again for all the reviews, I love getting them!


	6. When the Morning Comes

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

Damon and Elena

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Six: When the Morning Comes  
><strong>

"What the _hell_ do you mean by that?"

Damon finds himself smirking at Elena's indignant reply to his snarky suggestion, thoroughly amused at how irate she was becoming and much preferring the amusement to the need to taste the mouth that's been so sassy since she woke up minutes ago.

He sees Elijah glance at him speculatively and knows that the other vampire is wondering about his amusement and his tolerance of her irreverence.

Damon can see that Elijah's curiosity is going to fuel a conversation later and he can only imagine he'll find it irritating to explain himself but right now, he's focusing on the girl in front of him who looks dangerously close to stamping her foot and demanding an answer to everything.

Answers he doesn't have but he's sure she can help find.

Keeping his smirk in place, he steps closer to her and contemplates sitting down beside her. The look on her face – while amusing – is enough to have him reconsider the idea. Instead, he widens his stance and folds his arms across his chest, meeting her irritated gaze and ignoring the curl of lust in his gut at how steady it is.

"You want to know what we're talking about, right?" He asks her and continues when she nods imperceptibly. "And you're a curious history student who has a few more hours to kill before the sun rises and the population deems it safe to be out and about on the dangerous street of Mystic Falls so why not do what you do best and use my library to figure it out?"

He notes the exact moment when she picks up on his train of thought and chooses to ignore how the curl of lust tightens when her eyes grow thoughtful as he finished his sentence.

"Seriously?"

He rolls his eyes. "Would I have suggested it if I'd been joking?"

"Ah, no, no." Elena amends it quickly and her gaze turns speculative. "What's in this library and where would I start?"

"Books tend to be in a library, Elena," he drawls and is pleased to see irritation flash. "And maybe you should start with 1864? Elijah?" He defers to the other man watching the interaction with a calm look on his face and calculation in his eyes.

"I do agree. 1864 is often a good place to start." The older man acquiesces. "I find, especially from the era, journals are the best place to start."

"Clearly. Primary sources are often the best to use." Elena replies, contempt coloring her expression and forcing Damon to swallow a chuckle and Elijah to raise his eyebrows. "Why do you want me to do it, though? Shouldn't you both have an idea seeing as you were talking in riddles seconds ago?"

Smart girl, Damon thinks when she asks the question and finds a tug of respect joining the curl of lust. It makes her, Damon knows, all the more dangerous to him if respect is going to start coloring his opinion of her.

He catches Elijah's sly look and shrugs his shoulders, deciding it may be best to simply get her started on this.

"We could. But then, history students are often better at finding things then we are, aren't they? They tend to have more objectivity."

Elena's eyes narrow at his words and he offers her only a steady look in return. It takes only a few seconds before the look starts to morph into what it had been outside when she'd been defiant and beautiful after trying to escape.

It's a vortex, being dragged into this look. He's caught in her eyes and it's a web of innocence and beauty like he's never known. She's a beautifully innocent, dangerous girl and the lust that spikes through him is like nothing he's ever known. It appeals to the most primal part of him, the animal that wants to drag her back to his bed and claim her by driving deep inside her and drawing on the blood that's so intoxicating while feeding her his, so their linked by blood. The animal that wants to cradle her afterwards, coaxing her body close and revelling in the claim before doing it all over again.

Elena breaks the gaze first and the color that washes over her cheeks leaves his mouth watering and his trousers tight.

"Dangerous, dangerous girl." He murmurs; his gaze still on her face though she's not looking at him.

Her hand trembles only slightly as it rises to push her hair back and he fights back the lust coursing through him, rational thinking more appealing to him now then the thoughts of taking her to his bed.

"W-where's the library?" Elena's voice breaks only slightly and he inhales, once, deeply, regretting it as the scent of her washes over him and understanding of why Stefan attacked inevitable.

"Through that door over there." He gestures to a door to her right and she nods firmly, as if trying to pull her thoughts together.

"I'll, uh, go and get started. Do you have my bag?"

The innocent question is enough to break through the last of the lust he's trying to control and he curses at it.

"Your bag?"

She nods. "Yes. I had one before…before I got here. It had a notebook and some pens and, pretty much everything else."

He meets her explanation with silence and her eyes widen as she realizes why.

"Are you serious? They're – they're going to find my bag and think I'm dead! It had everything in it! My ID, my cell, do you have a cell? My family needs to know I'm alive before they find my bag!" Hysteria seeps into her voice and he shifts over to her before he can stop himself, pressing her back into the couch and keeping his face close to hers.

"Stop." He orders and her mouth snaps shut as she glares at him mutinously. "When I was saving your very pretty neck, your bag and the implications of leaving it there didn't really occur to me."

"Oh, how nice. You keep me alive only to have them think I'm dead. Thanks for that, really." She snaps back sarcastically before he can continue.

"They're not going to think you're dead, Elena. Because the second the sun starts to rise we'll have you back in front of your suburban façade and you can explain you dropped your bag when you took shelter for the night because you thought someone was following you, am I clear?" She folds her arm and he wonders idly if she knows how quickly he's gone from wanting to take her, to snapping the very pretty neck he'd saved.

"Uh-huh. Can I at least have a phone to call my family?"

"No."

Damon finds it that simple to refuse her and it's clear, from the way she stares at him, that she's not used to being refused.

"Why not?"

He pauses for a moment, wondering just how much she knows about the town she lives in before deciding it's probably worth telling her, just in case they question her when she leaves and she struggles for answers.

"Because there are certain people in this town who would like nothing more than to use you as an excuse to burst into this house and destroy every single one of us. If you call your family, then I guarantee the rescue mission that it would incur would end…badly." He states it as a fact, the threat behind the words enough for her to eye him.

She's silent for a few seconds and he can see her mulling it over in her mind. He can see her using the blueprint of everything she'd ever been told and failing to understand how she's worth a rescue mission.

"I'm not worth a rescue mission, though."

He rolls his eyes. "That's debatable. To them, you are worth the excuse to storm in here."

"Why?"

"Why don't you go to the library and find out. I'm sure that you'll find a notepad and pens in there." He straightens, taking a step away from her and watching as she stands up and begin to stalk around the couch, towards the door he'd indicated. "Don't be too excited about it." He calls to her and is rewarded with a scathing look.

"Whatever." She mutters, loud enough for him to catch as she opens the door.

He can tell the second she forgets to be mad at him and is more than amused by the way she contemplates the library with a look of glee before she remembers that she's angry and steps into the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Silence follows the slamming of the door and he can hear her moving around in the library, no doubt searching for the notepad and pens he spoke about. He also has no doubt that if he goes in and tries to help her, the likelihood is she'd cling to stubbornness and refuse his help.

"She certainly has a fire within her, Damon." Elijah speaks slowly, as if formulating his thoughts as he moves over to the drink cart and pours himself a scotch.

Though his eyes are still trained on the door, he inclines his head. "Yes, she does."

"And it's quite attractive."

"Yes, it is."

"You've considering bedding her already."

The confidence in Elijah's statement forces his eyes away from the door and to Elijah's, who's comfortably swirling the ice in his scotch around and studying him carefully, thoughtfully, as if trying to figure out what's going on in his head.

"You can say fucking, Elijah. We live in the twenty-first century." He shoots back and then sighs. "Get to the point."

"I didn't say fucking, Damon, because that would imply she's just one of the number who have visited your bed. I saw it in your eyes; you've considered taking her blood as well." Elijah sips his drink slowly. "Even though you know she is more than likely who your witches and mine are speaking about."

"And?"

Elijah smiles a little at his warning tone. "And you can't take her until we know more. Which is why I assume you have her in the library?"

He shrugs. "Why not use someone who's decided to make their living researching the past?"

"You'll have to tell her both fragments you and I have, if she's to make any sense of it, whatsoever."

"I will. When she's got the basic facts and we have more of the spell."

Silence falls as Elijah nods in acceptance and Damon finds himself thinking back on the thoughts that had poured through him when he had met Elena's eyes and even before then, when he had been so close to tasting her mouth.

Control, he thinks, even the façade of control could break easily if he was that close to her again and the intent to taste her was there. He's also pretty sure that even if he contemplated the idea of staying well away from Elena Gilbert in the next couple of hours, the contemplation would be broken as easily as his control because he hasn't been so entertained by someone in such a long time.

"If I take her before we know what's going on, the world won't end Elijah."

Elijah pauses mid-sip at his words and lowers his tumbler to watch him as he turns to head up the stairs, remembering that he's due for a talk with Caroline and Stefan about the severity of disobeying something he considers to be a direct order.

"If you take her before we know what's happening, Damon, I wouldn't worry about the outside world ending."

He decides it's better to completely ignore Elijah's sentence as he starts to stroll up the stairs and head towards the room where he knows Caroline is cowering in wait.

Testing his control around Elena can wait.

* * *

><p>The library is one of the most amazing things she's ever seen. It's filled to the brim with books and documents that, given any other situation; she wouldn't have been able to stop herself from devouring the books and discovering the secrets hidden in the documents as old as this town.<p>

Her problem is, though, that her mind is stuck on Damon Salvatore, specifically the way her blood had heated and her body had yearned in response to the heated gaze he had trapped her in.

Swallowing, Elena raises her hand to her cheek and isn't surprised that it's still warm from her reaction to him. Her whole body is still warm from her reaction to him and it scares her a little.

She has _never _reacted to someone in quite the way she's reacted to Damon.

She's not naïve and there have been boys before but never has she had someone tempt her, the way he had by simply holding her gaze. She's never seen quite so clearly exactly what he wants to do to her and she's never considered throwing caution to the wind and allowing him. She's never been so tempted as to allow someone to take her to his bed for the first time.

And that's the scary part because for twenty-one years, she hasn't ever been tempted to allow someone to touch her that way and now; all it has taken is a steady gaze from a man who is so much more than a man for her to know that if he tries, she won't stop him.

Closing her eyes, Elena can almost feel him pressed against her, she can feel herself surrendering to whatever he wants and she can almost taste him because of it and she knows, without doubt, that if the time ever comes, she'll allow him to take everything she's able to give.

Not if, a voice whispers silently, when.

"Oh, God." Her eyes snap open as she speaks and Elena shakes her head sharply, once.

It's not going to happen like that, she decides. She's not going to surrender to him, even if he looks at her that way again, even if he ever gets around to kissing her the way he had almost done earlier and if he asks for a reason, well, Elena bites her bottom lip, she'd think of something.

The practical thoughts relax her almost immediately.

Elena knows she's not prone to romantic fantasies and it unnerves her that she's fallen prey to them now, when she should be focussing on surviving the rest of the night without fainting again or falling victim to a vampires thirst.

Except, she doubts that she's even going to fall victim to a vampires thirst because, as far as she knows, no-one else has tried to attack since the beginning of the night.

How is that possible? Elena wonders. Everything she'd ever been taught about vampires had centred on their unquenchable thirst, their total disregard for human life, the ruthlessness and enjoyment of the kill. If any of that was true, she should be dead. If what she'd been told was true then she should've been dead when Damon's brother had pinned her to the wall not standing in their library, because Damon had suggested she do some research.

Except, she's got no idea what she's meant to be researching.

"Oh, my God." She groans and spins around to pull open the door, to ask Damon what she's meant to be researching before pausing.

Pursing her lips, Elena turns back to face the library, her gaze sweeping over the rows of books and the stacks of what looked to be leather journals. Moving closer to the journals, Elena takes note of the yellowing of the pages and the scratches on the cover that speaks to the age of them, reaching out to pick one up, she wonders if any of them were written when Mystic Falls became the haunted town she'd grown up in.

Frowning a little as she reaches out to delicately pick up the journal on top of one of the stacks and wonders if the date that Damon has given her and whoever the other man is, she's pretty sure his name is Elijah, has anything to do with what she's currently thinking.

"Only one way to find out." She mutters, flicking open the journal and giving thought to finding a notepad and pen before deciding that she should just start with reading the first journal and take notes later.

Glancing around and finding herself an armchair to sink into, Elena opens the journal and, for a moment, takes simple pleasure in the flowing script on the page and the fact that she's holding a well-kept historical document that she doesn't have to return or hand over in time for it to be put away for safe keeping.

Blowing out a breath, she settles deeper into the armchair and starts to read.

* * *

><p>"Stop lecturing me!"<p>

He narrows his eyes. "Lecturing, you? Seriously? Lecturing, you? Barbie, I'd rather stake myself then try and get through to you with longwinded speeches about listening to people."

"Then you obviously came up here for my titillating wit!" Caroline shoots back and Damon hears his brother chuckle and shoots him a murderous look.

"Amazing, you've finally reached the T chapter in the dictionary, congratulations." He steps closer to the blond when she opens her mouth, irritation bright in his eyes enough for her to snap her mouth shut. "You directly went against what I asked you to do, Caroline and you pissed me off because of it."

She snorts. "Oh, and here I thought you were pissed about Stefan attacking Elena."

"I can be pissed off about more than one thing at a time, Barbie and right now I'm dealing with you. Did you even think when you decided to go and see her? You're a vampire and you're a vampire who doesn't have a great track record when it comes to being around humans." The hurt that flashes through her eyes is enough for him to know that his words have hit home.

"I wouldn't have – "

"You wouldn't have been able to help yourself, Jack the Brooder over there couldn't. Her blood smells better than any you have ever come across and your control would have gone up in smoke." He snaps, cutting off her argument and leaving her gaping.

Silence follows his words and he glances around the room they share and forces himself to not roll his eyes. The room is clearly divided by what is Caroline's and what is his brothers with the bed as the line between because it is, on one side of the room is all the creature comforts of a teenager from this day and age. A notebook computer, stereo system, lamps and a dresser cluttered with make-up and God knew what else Caroline smeared on her face. On Stefan's side, nothing has changed in a hundred and forty-five years and he highly doubts it ever will. His brother has stacks of books, leather bound journals and even the pen he used back when he was human on a large wooden desk.

It's actually quite disturbing to see this room and Damon wonders if his brother and his child have ever actually looked at each other's side and wondered why they're together.

"Damon," Caroline's quite voice causes his eyes to snap back to hers. "I need to see her."

He folds his arms across his chest and nearly sighs because this Caroline, the quiet blond who requests things without bravado and told him the truth, is one he can't really say no too.

"Caroline, I can't let you. She nearly had a panic attack when she saw you and she fainted when she saw your lapdog. And I don't trust your control around her."

Caroline's eyes flare. "Oh, but you trust yours?"

"Mine has built up over a century, Barbie. I'm not going to hurt her, especially seeing as you pointed out she's a member of one of the founding families and I'd rather not go through something as archaic as them trying to burn me." He says, starting to grow bored with the conversation now she's stopped arguing.

"Actually, they'd shoot you with vervain and then stake you." His brother pipes up and Damon stares at Stefan.

Stefan, for the most part, has the good sense to look at least a little sheepish at his unwarranted correction and Damon actually does roll his eyes this time.

"Is that what you do during the day? Research all the ways they'll try and kill us?" He asks and Stefan narrows his eyes and sneers a little, reminding Damon of when they were younger and Stefan was a little bit more fun.

"Stefan, you're an idiot. Damon, _please_ let me see her."

Caroline steps in before he can reply to Stefan's comment and his eyes swing to meet her pleading ones. For a moment, he does consider sending her down to the library and allowing her the reunion she's romanticized in her head and then decides against it. He doesn't trust Caroline's control or Elena's mouth and he doesn't trust that Elena won't anger Caroline accidentally and get hurt.

"No." He states firmly and Caroline opens her mouth. "Do _not_ beg." He warns and she snaps it shut, moving to let Stefan pull her tightly against him.

"I hate you, right now." She mutters when he turns around to head out of the door.

"Come up with new insults, Barbie. Please. It's irritating hearing how much you hate me every time we get into an argument." He throws over his shoulder and sees his brother smirk slightly and Caroline start glowering.

"Fine. You're a pig-headed, narcissistic, arrogant jerk who won't let me see my best friend!"

He spins back around to glare at her. "And you're a whiny little brat who forgets that grown-ups know best."

He stalks out of the room and only turns as he's shutting the door to catch Caroline gaping at him. He sends her a dark look.

"Don't you dare go to Elijah."

Stefan's imperceptible nod is the only agreement he gets and he pulls the door shut, irritated with himself and Caroline.

It annoys him that he nearly caved when Caroline begged and it annoys him even more that if he wasn't so sure of her losing control, she would have won that argument. It irritates him because he knows that Caroline, when she begs like that or even argues with him, brings out something in him that he doesn't like to examine too closely because it's too much like what he feels when Stefan argues with him.

They both take up an emotional wave length within him and he chooses not to think on the fact that because they do, they often get away with more than they ought too.

He doesn't bother greeting Elijah when he heads past him, save a glance in his direction and a sly smile that tells him Elijah had heard the argument between himself and Caroline and was, once again, amused by it.

Opening the library door, he slips in, prepared to take only a silent look at Elena and what she was doing before disappearing until it was time to take her home.

The sight of her curled up in a plush armchair, a journal open in her lap and her face serene in sleep makes him pause.

He feels the inexplicable pull towards her and registers that he's answering it only when he's close enough to see that her cheeks are flushed as she sleeps and can hear the soft sigh she makes as she shifts her position, rubbing her cheek against the velvet and disturbing some strands of hair enough for them to fall over her face.

Unable to stop himself – forgetting the argument with Caroline, the fact that he should stay well away from her and Elijah's own warning – he reaches down and gently pushes the hair back and away from her face before letting his knuckle brush back over the smooth skin of her cheek.

Beautiful, so beautiful, he thinks as his knuckle strokes up the slant of her cheekbone. His continues stroking her face even as he sees her eyelids start to flutter and he imagines, briefly, that if this was different, if his palm was pressed to her cheek, his thumb stroking just under her eye, she would nuzzle into it, a sleepy smile of greeting lighting up her face.

As it is, a smile lights up her eyes as she opens them to look at him and he can tell she's still caught between dreams and reality. It's almost a natural for him to drop down to his haunches as he continues stroking her cheek and he watches her intently.

"Hi." She says quietly, her tone low and languid.

He doesn't reply for a moment, still staring at her face and the slant of her cheekbones, the fullness of her mouth, the ebony eyes that are so fathomless and the dark locks that frame it.

"You're so beautiful."

She blushes and he enjoys the color that spreads across her skin. As the color sweeps across her cheeks, the blood coming to life under his thumb, it occurs to him that Elena may not be the only one breaking his control.

He's got a feeling that when it comes; he's going to break his own control to be with her.

* * *

><p>"<em>You're so beautiful.<em>"

Elijah takes a sip of his scotch as he listens to Damon words and wonders idly if his friend realizes he's sunk before he even has a chance to fight.

He'd seen it when Damon had bought the girl home, snarling at Stefan and holding her tightly as he stormed upstairs with her and locked them out of his room and away from her.

It had become much more apparent when he'd seen the way his friend had looked at Elena Gilbert and the way she had responded to just that look.

Blood, Elijah supposes, recognises its match long before the heart does and lust always springs from it.

It had been so easy to see the claim in Damon's eyes when he had looked at the girl, easy to see the way his friend had not only wanted to claim through sex and blood but stroke and soothe after the passion had died and the bond had been completed.

Easier still to see the reaction in the girl as she'd yearned to succumb to what Damon had been unknowingly offering when he'd been looking at her so intently.

Swirling his drink, Elijah supposes it's easy to see when one has been through it himself but even he can see that the need Damon has to claim Elena is different from the needs he's seen before and experienced himself.

Vampires tend to claim the blood and bond first and love second, after the desire for the blood has passed and they are left to realize their forever mate is the one they've taken to bed.

Stefan learned that the hard way after he'd attacked Caroline.

He's certain, though, that Stefan's brother won't do the same thing.

Elijah finds himself certain that Damon will love Elena first and claim her second and he wonders if that is part of the spell the witches had cast upon his friend.

He finds that he's certain when the morning comes and Elena's gone, Damon won't be able to leave her alone.

* * *

><p>AN: An update! This chapter gave me fits, actually, to the point where I started another story because it was just irritating me. I kind of like it actually, though I suppose my favorite part is the ending with Elijah's thoughts. And we'll start getting into the what the hell they've been talking about for the last couple of chapters next chapter, especially seeing as Elena's now started her 'research'. I hope you guys enjoyed it!


	7. Damned If I Do

Dislcaimer: Don't own TVD.

D/E

S/C

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Seven: Damned If I Do  
><strong>

Elena's pretty sure her cheeks are still red.

In fact, she's pretty sure that her cheeks aren't just red, she's sure they're putting fire trucks and tomatoes to shame as she struggles to ignore the presence of Damon in the far corner of the library, flipping casually through a book that she suspects is much older then she is.

She's not even struggling, though, she thinks sourly. Her eyes are involuntarily drawn to the back of Damon's head as it bends over the book all because he thinks she's _beautiful_.

Even though she's trying to be snide about it, even though she _wants_ to be snide about his comment, Elena feels her cheeks heat up even more and the nervous flip of her stomach as she thinks back to how quiet and intense his voice had been when he'd told her she was beautiful. She can feel the way the words had coursed through her, heating her blood and making her yearn more intensely then she had when he'd done nothing but look at her.

It's very hard to be snide about something, she's discovering, when it had managed to make her feel beautiful.

It had also managed to make her feel like she was sixteen again and had caught the attention of the cutest boy in school only to embarrass herself by fumbling over her reply to his compliment except Damon Salvatore wasn't the cutest boy at Mystic Falls High and she hadn't just fumbled her response, she had completely butchered it.

It had taken her three seconds flat to turn a moment shaped by the soft shades of sleep and the intensity of a man who means what he's saying into something so utterly…_wrong_.

He'd shut down, Elena remembers, she'd stuttered over her response and – unlike everything she'd been taught to believe – he had _not_ found it endearing at all. She was pretty sure Damon hadn't even enjoyed the fact that he'd managed to get one up on her. He'd just shut down. His gaze had shuttered, his mouth had hardened and he'd dropped his hand from her face.

Seeing it, watching the way he had shut down had, inexplicably, made her want to scramble to save herself and the moment and the reaction had been so instinctive and so forceful it had made her pause.

And she was still contemplating the reasons for her pausing now, what felt like forever and a day later and, in reality, had to be only about twenty minutes.

Maybe, Elena thinks, flipping another page of the book she was pretending to read, that's what she was so irritated and resentful about.

She couldn't seem to find the right list of reasons for pausing so dramatically and ruining the moment so completely he'd moved to the other side of the library after she'd fallen silent and he'd seemed to realize there was no reason saying anything else.

Mostly because there hadn't been any reason for him to say she was beautiful in the first place.

Scowling, Elena shakes her head slightly, irritated now that her thoughts have started circling around and trying to settle on the fact that there were no real reasons why she had paused in that moment other then she'd been terrified of that moment.

No, she thinks, that's not quite true. She hadn't been terrified of the moment. She had been terrified of the way he'd made her feel and the way she had wanted to touch him _so_ _badly_ and the way it had made her realize all over again how much she would give him should he ask her to give it.

It had terrified her because the heat of his gaze from earlier, the way it had twisted her stomach in knots and made her yearn for something she's never really wanted with anyone else had made her want to resist surrendering to readily to him.

The heat of his gaze had made her want, desperately; to fight against surrendering to everything his gaze had promised her in that one heated moment even knowing she'd probably lose.

But the sweetness of the moment she'd butchered, the way his calloused fingers had stroked her cheek softly, the way he'd genuinely meant his words, had made surrendering such a sweet, viable option she was terrified if he was sweet again, she wouldn't pause.

Elena bites her lip a little at her thoughts, at how sure she is that, one way or another, she's going to end up surrendering to the needs Damon Salvatore provokes within her.

And _that_ is probably what's irritating her most of all.

She's beginning to dislike, intensely, this strange feeling of inevitability she gets whenever she finds herself caught in those looks she and Damon share.

Snapping her book shut, Elena scowls a little at the book case she's standing in front of and violently shoves the book she's holding back into the space it had left when she'd picked it up.

Maybe, she thinks, she can channel her frustration about this strange, overwhelming attraction between her and Damon into something a little more useful.

Like how she has no idea why she'd thought that trying to find out how Mystic Falls became the haunted town she'd grown up was going to be easy or interesting.

Because it wasn't and the journal she'd been trying to read before she fell asleep and well before, well, the perfectly butchered moment, had been filled with nothing more than grain reports and complaints about the Civil War.

There was nothing supernatural about them.

She's actually beginning to suspect the only supernatural thing or reference to one in this library at the current moment was Damon.

"Ugh."

The moment the sound leaves her mouth, Elena winces and regrets it immediately because she's sure that it'll draw Damon's attention back to her and it's not something she's sure she wants.

"You know, if you don't like what's in front of you, there's a whole shelf full of books next to you to glare at."

Too late, Elena thinks as she turns to face Damon, a sarcastic smile on her face as she barely registers the sharpness to his voice. He's still holding the book he'd been flipping through open and there's a coolness too his gaze she would be unsure about if she wasn't frustrated and irritated and still a little terrified.

"Thanks but I haven't finished glaring at this shelf." She says, sarcasm all but dripping out of her mouth. "By the way, you're historical section sucks."

He cocks his head to one side at her words. "Really? And here I thought it was rather extensive. Having been, you know, _written_ around the time all those great historical events happened."

"1864 is _not_ a historical event. It's a year. And more one thing happened in 1864. The world was quite busy in fact."

"Oh, really?"

Frustration boils a little at his patronizing tone and she sneers a little at him. "Obviously. The Civil War was happening. Prussia was at war with Denmark. The first Geneva Convention took place. Need I go on?"

"No. Apparently, I needed to be more specific when I asked you to do some research." Damon's voice is as cool as the look in his eyes and Elena shrugs.

"No. You think?"

Elena folds her arms defensively when she see's irritation flare in his eyes at her sarcastic words and, in the back of her mind, is somewhat aware that she's taking her frustration at herself, him and this strange situation she's found herself in, out on Damon.

It would be a stupid move, she knows, if she wasn't so sure he would never hurt her.

Still, she jumps a little when he snaps the book shut. "Careful, Elena, you don't want to irritate me."

There's a threat to his words, as if he's warning her off needling him anymore and Elena finds that, if possible, it only irritates her more. She's certain that she would rather deal with an irritated Damon then the sweet one and its cause enough for her to raise an eyebrow.

"Why not? It's not like you're going to hurt me otherwise you would have left me for dead earlier tonight."

Vampires are quick.

Before the last word leaves her mouth, Elena finds herself caught between the unyielding bookcase she'd been glaring at before and the hard body of Damon Salvatore, her arms pinned effectively above her head.

Heat erupts at the press of his body – from thigh to sternum – and brings everything into sharp focus.

She can feel the spines of the books digging into her spine and the calluses on his hand as it pins her wrists against the books above her head. Her head tilts back so she can meet his eyes and she can see coolness as well as irritation in his eyes and something else. Something more primal, something that makes her stomach liquefy and her muscles loosen and the blood – already heated to an unbearable level – to heat up her skin and shorten her breaths.

If this, Elena thinks, is what brutal arousal is like, then she's sure she has a right to be terrified of it.

"_Don't_ provoke a vampire, Elena. You will lose." His voice is low and serious and, if possible, just as arousing as the primal look in his eye.

Forcing herself not squirm, Elena glares up at him. "Is that supposed to scare me, Damon? It doesn't."

"Well, aren't you just _so_ brave? Unafraid of the big, bad vampire that's got you right where he wants you." He's irritated, Elena can see it in his eyes and she knows, somehow, that he isn't just irritated because she's tried to pick a fight and succeeded.

Somehow, she knows that he's irritated for the same reasons she's irritated and, for some inexplicable reason, it aggravates her even further.

Because he has _no_ right to be irritated because he turns her into a fumbling fifteen year old when he says something to her that he has no right saying.

"You won't hurt me, Damon." His eyes darken and she tilts her head back slightly, so his breath is on her lips and he can see the utter belief in her eyes. Her breath catches in the back of her throat as something in his gaze sharpens and his hips press against hers more firmly.

Then the breath that's caught simply disappears when he lowers his mouth to her ear, nosing aside her hair gently and causing her to shiver when she feels his breath on the sensitive skin below her ear.

"You're right. I won't hurt you." His voice in her ear is soft velvet and irritated beyond belief. "Because I _can't_."

* * *

><p>"Where is she, Grayson?"<p>

Miranda Gilbert's voice is laced with worry and fatigue as she sits at her kitchen table, clutching a mug of lukewarm coffee and watching as her husband paces the length of their kitchen over and over.

"I don't know, Miranda. I just don't know." Grayson Gilbert answers, his tone laced with the more than the worry and fatigue of his wife.

He's panicking and he's berating himself, continually, for allowing Elena to come home only a few weeks before her twenty-first birthday. He had tried to convince her at the beginning of summer there was no need for her to return to Mystic Falls. He'd tried to convince her that they could come up to New York to see her and that it was silly for her to return to a town she had hated so much.

He had tried _so hard_ to keep her safe in New York and had caved when she'd begged him to let her come home.

He knows that he probably could have tried harder and maybe even told her why he hadn't wanted her to come home for this one summer instead, he'd listened to her pleas of wanting to be home for her birthday and to see her family and spend time with her friends and had found himself waiting to pick her up instead of going to New York.

And now, he was regretting it all so much.

Because she was missing and Grayson is sure he knows why and who has her.

"Don't lie to me, Gray. Please don't. Where is she?"

His wife's reaching for his hand as she asks the question and he takes hers willingly, finding comfort in the familiar scent of Elizabeth Arden and her warm brown eyes.

Miranda doesn't know much about why he'd wanted so badly for his daughter to stay in New York for her twenty-first birthday nor is she aware of the reasons why he had spent so much time standing guard of Elena and panicking when she had disappeared that day in the woods nearly twelve years ago to the day. She had simply accepted him to be an overprotective father especially because of where they lived and his lineage.

His wife has no idea he has spent nearly twenty-one years acting like an overprotective parent only to all but shove his daughter on the next train to New York the minute she graduated because he knows that if his daughter was to ever cross the vampires who haunted their town, they were going to lose her to the one that had had Mystic Falls cursed in the first place.

His wife has no idea that their daughter was destined to meet Damon Salvatore since the Bennett witch cast her spell in 1864.

And the thing that scares him the most about Elena's predetermined destiny is the fact that the relationship between the vampire and the girl was never specified and Grayson finds himself terrified to know what type of relationship Elena will form with the vampire who started it all.

He glances down at his wife and sees that she's still waiting for his reply. Grayson heaves a sigh and lowers himself down to the kitchen chair beside her, contemplating sipping from her coffee before shaking his head.

"Honey, where is she?" Miranda's voice is soft and soothing and he closes his eyes, suddenly very tired.

"I think she's at the Salvatore Boarding House." He feels her hand tighten around his at his admission and opens his eyes to see her panic. "But she's absolutely safe."

Miranda's silent for a moment and he waits patiently for her burst of panicked anger before the women he loves who reasonably accepts everything he throws at her and still manages to love him, returns.

"She's in a house with those _monsters_ and you want me to believe she's safe?"

He nods sharply, once. "Yes."

"She is not safe, Grayson. I have _not_ spent over twenty-two years living in this nightmare of a town to believe my daughter is safe in the hands of a Salvatore."

Grayson wants to refute her words violently but knows, unless he tells her all he knows that it's not going to be possible. Miranda had given Elena her sense of innate curiosity and he's well aware that disagreeing with her will lead to him telling her everything.

It takes him only a split second to realize that he's going to be damned if he ever survives this night and he may as well let his wife know.

"She's safe, Miranda. I know she's safe because Damon Salvatore cannot physically hurt." Miranda's mouth falls open at his forceful words and he sighs. "You'd better wake Jeremy; he needs to know this too."

Grayson closes his eyes as his wife splutters and decides that he was damned long before he started this conversation.

* * *

><p>"What do you mean you can't hurt me?"<p>

Her voice is breathless in his ear and her body is soft, supple and fits dangerously close to perfectly against his and he's more irritated then he's ever been with a woman.

He'd known, hadn't he? Damon thinks sourly. He'd known she was going to pick a fight after he'd simply shut her out after the ridiculous moment when he'd called her beautiful.

He had been able to sense her frustration building to match his as the minutes had ticked past and he'd stood on the other side of the library, pretending to flip through a book and being hyper aware of the girl opposite to him.

He'd been hyper aware that she was causing him more stress in the few hours he'd known her then he'd ever had over a century on earth. He was aware too, that he'd wanted her then more then he'd had when he'd caught himself out in front of Elijah, the innocent fumble over a comment she must have heard a hundred times before just as arousing as the way she'd met his gaze head on.

He was also aware that she'd been breathing and, combined, all those reason were enough for frustration and irritation to start welling.

Then she'd made that sound and he'd taken the bait.

Now, he was frustrated, irritated and brutally aroused as he pressed her body against the bookcase and tried to fight the thoughts of how easy it would be take her against the bookcase, how easy it would be to slide her skirt and bury himself deep inside her to claim.

"I can't hurt you. Isn't that simple enough to understand?" He grinds out, shaking thoughts of taking her from his mind and watching her eyes darken with arousal even more as he shifts his hips and she feels him against her.

"No. It's not simple enough, why can't you hurt me? You're the big, bad vampire, in case you've forgotten."

He's not sure if he's impressed she still manages to sound snide even as her lower body shifts against his and the friction causes him to clench his teeth and wish he'd thought before pinning her against the bookcase.

He decides he's irritated.

Irritated is safer.

"I haven't forgotten but I still can't hurt you." He says and can see that she's not about to let it go. He decides because she's not, he _can_ let her go.

So he does. Unceremoniously, he releases the wrists he'd pinned with one and yanks his body away from hers, watching as she hits the ground, slightly stunned.

"What do you mean, Damon?" Elena asks, raising her hand to push it through her thick dark locks.

For a moment, his attention is based solely on her hand and then he shrugs. "I can't hurt you. Consider it a freaky vampire thing."

She's silent for a moment and he knows she's thinking of a way to argue with him. Something she does surprisingly well and he's sure would entertain him had he not been so irritated to begin with.

"No. It's not a freaky vampire thing. Why can't you hurt _me_? I get the feeling, given all those 'animal attacks' on hikers when I was growing up, that you can hurt people." Her eyes narrow a little and he can see, actually _see_, options running through her mind to explain his apparent inability to hurt her. The light up a little when she hits what she must think is a wonderful idea. "Does it have something to do with 1864?"

Damon shrugs because, honestly? He's not sure how to explain it but he's sure that if he ever figures it out, it will explain the fact that he's saved her from two near death experiences in her life.

He's not sure if it has anything to do with 1864 for a whole other reason.

"I don't know."

Elena raises an eyebrow and the frustration he thought he'd seen starting to ebb, returned and he can't help himself. He sneers a little at the look.

"Seriously? You don't know? Weren't you alive then? Or not dead? Or whatever?"

"Or whatever." He snips and then shrugs. "Maybe. But hey, there were a lot of things happening in 1864 weren't there? You know the Civil War and the Geneva Convention and such." He turns her own words on her with a certain sense of satisfaction and finality Elena, apparently, doesn't feel or share.

"Don't change the subject. Is it your inability to not hurt me connected to 1864?" She asks and he wants to point out the absurdity of her mind jumping from him not being able to hurt her to 1864 then realizes that maybe, in her mind, it's not such a big jump.

"I don't know."

Elena snorts. "Please. You know."

Damon scowls at her again, wishing that he hadn't admitted anything and then decides maybe he should go ahead with it anyway. After all, he was already damned so there was no point wondering if he was going to be damned if he ever got out of this conversation.

"No. I don't know."

"How can you not know? Everyone knows you're at least a hundred and forty-five years old, therefore unless my maths is shot to hell, you should know if 1864 is connected to your apparent inability to hurt me." She asks, logically Damon can tell she thinks.

He kind of hates it is logical almost as much as he hates the answer he's about to give her.

"I don't know, Elena, because I don't remember anything about 1864."

She seems stunned for all over five seconds before everything but seriousness slides from her face. "Huh?"

"I don't remember 1864. Most of 1863 too, actually." He elaborates, wondering why he was telling her this and then, inexplicably, not caring.

He doesn't care because, strangely enough, there's something about Elena Gilbert he trusts. He also doesn't care because he's got a feeling the moment he tells her the little he knows, she'll want to figure it and he'd already figured out having a history student used to research was probably a good thing to have around.

"You don't remember?" She asks curiously. "You don't remember anything, at all?"

"Nope." He eyes her and then continues. "Well, except the fact that I'm the reason Mystic Falls is cursed and I kind of remember the spell that was cast."

He thinks if she had been holding a book, she would have dropped it by now as he, as casually as possible, mentions what he _does_ know about his missing year and a half.

A year and a half that haunts him because he's not sure what he did to warrant Mystic Falls and, by extension, himself to be cursed. It picks at him sometimes, when he's thinking too hard about being stuck in this town and he can almost grasp the whisper of the spell.

The whispers which sound all too much like the lines Sheila Bennett and Elijah had fed him earlier.

"Spell? As in witches? There are witches?" Elena sounds so stunned, Damon rolls his eyes.

"Seriously? You're okay with being in a house full of vampires but the idea that witches exist is like telling you _The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe_ is based on a true story."

He _really_ likes her glare.

It causes him to smirk as she turns it on him and then he sighs as her watches her push his sarcastic comment aside so she can concentrate.

"Whatever. Do you want help remembering?" She asks pointedly and he shrugs.

"How are you going to help me get my memory back?"

He doesn't mean to sound condescending or, well, condescending but he does and he know she notices because Damon can tell she thinks about glaring before shrugging a little and deciding to answer the question properly.

Elena casts her gaze around the room and then shrugs. "Your historical section may suck but I imagine there's something about supernatural activity in 1864 hidden in here somewhere, we just have to find it."

He's not too sure if he hopes she's right or if he hopes she's completely wrong because there's something about remembering that's making him feel incredibly uneasy.

* * *

><p>AN: I'm not entirely happy with this chapter. I started it a million - possibly only six - times and I'm still not happy with it. The storyline needed to be moved along and the Damon not remembering thing came to be quite strangely, but hey, if it's what the story wants then the story gets. I may come back and review it later and possibly replace it, but its out! I hope you enjoyed reading. Thanks again to all the reviews and alerts, I really appreciate it guys!


	8. Puzzle Pieces

__Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

D/E

S/C

Epically Long A/N: I'm _so sorry_ it's taken me something like five months - very close to six - to update this again but things somehow spiralled out of control after my computer screen broke after I'd posted the last chapter. Suddenly my computer was gone, then when I got it back it was Christmas time and with brothers and their girlfriends and my family and my friends it was chaos, same with New Years. Then I found out I was moving to a different state because I'd been accepted into a new university and I had to find a place to live and move and then actually _start_ university and while all this was happening, my muse decided a holiday was in order because, hey, everybody else was on holiday, so why not her? Then she wouldn't come home until, well, now apparently. Nearly six months later and feeling very sluggish and, hopefully, refreshed. So I sat down and tried to recapture this story - I hope it works - in this new chapter! Again, I'm really sorry for disappearing for close to six months! It most definitely was _not_ my intention until, you know, life happened.

Please enjoy this new chapter!

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Eight: Puzzle Pieces  
><strong>

_The grief is all consuming. _

_It tears through him like a hot knife, slashing at the feelings he holds closest as he stands in the early morning sun, staring down in horror at the mangled wreck that used to be his brothers bike and the body of his eldest brother. _

_The body that seems to be refusing to heal. _

_It's impossible, he thinks numbly, unaware of anything outside of this all-consuming grief, his gaze locked on Damon's immobile face, bloodied by a crash without cause and pillowed on the lap of the best friend of his girlfriend. _

"_Damon. Damon. Do something. Say something. Damon."_

_The voice is desperate and low, her knuckles dragging down the side of his brothers face over and over as she pleads with his brother. Pleads for him to open his eyes. To move. To do something that Stefan knows Damon's never going to do again. _

"_It's over. Finally. The bastards dead."_

_The words are said without remorse, filled with nothing but pleasure at the sight of his brother dying on the ground and Stefan doesn't think as the bloodlust he tries so hard to control erupts, slicing through the grief and making him see red as he lunges for the throat of the person that has spoken._

Caroline flies across the room, hitting his desk with a solid thud as he sits with his chest heaving.

"Stefan! What the hell?" Caroline stands up, fury in every word even as he struggles to get out of bed.

He can still feel the grief. He can still feel the bloodlust raging through him and hear Elena beg for his brother to do something.

He can still see his brother's body, bloodied on the ground in the blazing sun.

He tears the sheets as he struggles to get them from around his waist and fights to catch his breath as he staggers up from the bed.

"Jesus. Jesus Christ. Jesus." His back hits the door with a resounding thud and he feels rather than sees Caroline rush towards him.

His arms snap out for her and he yanks her hard against him, the familiar feel of her body against his, the soothing pressure of her hands rubbing up and down his back push through the dredges of the dream and the heat of the grief.

"Baby. Babe, tell me what's wrong." Caroline's voice is as low and soothing as her hands and he inhales the familiar scent of her blood, avoiding answering. "Stefan. Seriously. You just threw me into your desk. Talk to me."

He pulls away at that, concern of her overriding the shakiness the dream has left.

"Are you okay?"

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Duh. Vampire, remember? Stefan, tell me what the hell just happened here."

He pauses, wondering if he can keep it from her when he a knock on the door alerts him to the fact that somebody has heard the commotion.

He hopes to God it's not his brother.

"Go away." Caroline snaps at the door, pulling away slightly so she's simply rubbing his upper arms.

"I've come to make no-one has been killed, Caroline." Elijah drawls as he opens the door, raising his eyebrows at the scene in front of him. "Apparently, the only thing that's been hurt has been the bedding."

Stefan meets Elijah's gaze even as Caroline bristles and knows that the older vampire is aware that something more than a fight has torn the sheets.

"It was nothing. Just a bad dream."

Stefan wills the older man to understand, knowing that Elijah was around the last time a nightmare like this had choked him. Except this nightmare had been much more vivid. Stefan swallows at the fact that he can still feel the sun pounding down on the back of his neck.

"Ah, a more detailed one, I assume?" Elijah asks his eyes intense and Stefan nods sharply.

"Much more vivid. And…there were other people there."

He doesn't want to go into too much more detail without speaking to his brother first and he certainly doesn't want to tell Caroline without calming down enough to speak about it without flinching at the feel of the grief or the vivid imagine of Damon, broken and bloody.

"Excuse me. I want to know what just happened. Which means, you, Elijah, can leave." Caroline interrupt before the older man can ask any more questions.

"Of course, if you see Damon, please tell him I've gone to check something. I'll be out of town until at least tomorrow night." Elijah says, his eyes steady as Stefan gives him an imperceptible nod over Caroline's head, knowing that what Elijah is going to check has something to do with the dream he's had and the appearance of one Elena Gilbert.

"Fine. Shut the door on your way out." Caroline waits until Elijah has done as she's asked before turning back to him. "Stefan, tell me what made you through me out of bed and across the room or I swear to – "

He interrupts her before she can finish. "I have to go and see Damon. I'll tell you once I've spoken to him."

He snags a wife beater up from the floor, pulling it over his head and smiling a little at the look on Caroline's face.

Reaching out, he strokes it gently, leaning down to place a kiss on her mouth. "I'm sorry I threw you across the room. I'll tell you about it when after I've seen Damon."

Caroline pouts a little at his words. "Fine. Go and see if your big brother cares about your nightmare."

Stefan chuckles without humour. "He will. Please don't go looking for Elena. I'll be back soon, okay?"

He leaves their room quickly, unwilling to hear Caroline's complaints at being kept away from her best friend and hoping that his brother will be in the mood to take him seriously.

* * *

><p>As far as Elena's concerned, vampires do <em>not<em> get amnesia. Especially vampires who have terrorized the town she was born in since 1864.

At least, that's what she was thinking right up until she saw the look on Damon's face as he told her he doesn't remember both 1864 and most of 1863.

She imagines the concept seeming completely irrational right up until she focused on his expression instead of his words.

The look on his face had been pure frustration and resignation.

Like he was frustrated at his inability to remember and had already resigned himself to the fact that he'd never recover those memories.

In the split second that those emotions had reigned on his face, Elena found herself believing him totally.

Not because she doesn't mostly think Damon has lied to her since she met him but because some part of her wonders if – and she acknowledges that it's a pretty big if – Damon, at the core of this, is nothing but a victim in someone else's need to curse Mystic Falls.

Because, Elena reasons silently, if Damon was an instigator or even the villain, wouldn't he have some memory of 1864 and what had happened to their town during that year?

Then again, maybe he _wasn't _a victim and the memory loss has something to do with something horrible he had done in 1864. But then again, why take away his memory of doing something horrendous? Why not let him live with what he had done, whatever that was?

Wrinkling her nose, Elena stares down at the ledger she's holding and doubts that she's going to find anything useful in it apart from the recordings of farm profits. Apparently, Damon's father, Giuseppe, chose not to make social comments of any kind or give explanation for exorbitant sums in his ledger. It was simply a recording of expenditures and profit.

Sighing, she snaps it shut, noting that the leather bound book is in remarkably good condition and heavy as she places it on the small, round table she's set up near an armchair that's piled with as many ledgers and journals as she could find.

Somehow, looking at the pile, Elena doubts there's going to be anything remotely supernatural in any of these books and scowls a little as she remembers Damon saying exactly that before he'd left the library, shutting the door firmly behind him.

In a surprisingly undramatic exit considering the explosive episode that it had followed.

Still, before he'd left he'd made her feel like a complete idiot in the seconds after she'd told him that she was going to help him regain his memory.

And he'd done it with nothing more than a quirk of his eyebrow.

It was, Elena decides, infuriating, a word that seemed to be becoming more and more apt whenever Damon Salvatore was concerned.

All she'd done, Elena thinks, leaning forward so her elbows lean on her knees, was offer to help him get his memories back by finding something that may jumpstart them in his library.

She hadn't even offered it to give him peace of mind. Well, not really anyway, she amends. It had been driven by the gut feeling that the reason why he couldn't hurt her was somehow connected to 1864, the reason Mystic Falls was cursed and Damon's memory loss.

It might also, Elena muses, be connected to what that guy had said when Damon had bought her to parlour after she'd…fainted, Elena decides, not ready to face the consequences of who she had seen hanging out of his window only hours ago.

Shaking her head, she tries to recall what, exactly, he had said. He'd been amused, she remembers, and observant and he'd referred to her as 'the light'.

'_Wherever she is and wherever she goes, light will always be with her.'_

The words whisper through her mind and Elena frowns at them. They are, she decides, not helpful at all.

It seems to be like she's trying to put together a puzzle without knowing what it's supposed to look like when it's finished, without knowing which piece, if at all, is a starting or ending piece.

There's an ache starting to form at the base of her skull and Elena reaches up to massage at it even as she leans back in the chair, certain that she's never going to figure any of this out without asking Damon what, exactly, he already knows.

Not, she thinks wryly, that he's going to be very receptive of her questions if she tries to find him in the sprawling house.

Mainly because the way he had shut the door behind him had seemed to be an explicit instruction to stay where she was and also because, maybe, he didn't want to be alone with her anymore then she wanted to be alone with him.

The physicality of his reaction to her provocation earlier – the fact that he pinned her to a bookcase - makes her more wary of him then she had been before.

Because before, it had been close calls and distance between their bodies, there had been intense looks and bolts of heat but the feel of him pressed against her, the helplessness at being trapped and the need that had surged had been too strong and too much for something as simple as attraction.

No, nothing that strong could be considered something as simple as attraction.

Closing her eyes and deliberately trying to relax her shoulders, Elena takes a deep breath and wonders vaguely how she's gone nearly twenty-one years without ever once feeling the heat that seems to generate between her and Damon.

Then, because the thought is too close to the ones that had already taken root in her mind, Elena opens her eyes and decides that figuring out the puzzle pieces she's been presented with means that she's going to have to ignore the wariness she feels and get a much better reference point then 1864 from Damon and, maybe, whatever it is that he knows as well.

Then maybe she can try and find the bigger picture she's looking for.

After she tries to assuage his anger at her leaving the library against the non-verbal instructions he'd left, of course.

* * *

><p>The bourbon is definitely <em>not<em> doing its job.

Damon stands with leaning against a wall, a glass of bourbon cradled in his hands and his eyes closed as he tries to control what's raging inside him. Control that's not being helped by the bourbon he relies on so heavily.

Blowing out a breath, he takes another sip and decides he has absolutely no faith whatsoever in Elena's research skills and not because he doesn't want her to find anything in his 'sucky historical section'.

He has no faith because he _knows_ without doubt that there is absolutely nothing in that library that will tell her anything about his memory loss or anything that had occurred in 1864. Any records from this library had mysteriously vanished and Damon knows, quite well, exactly where they've ended up.

Grayson Gilbert has been in possession of any supernatural documents from their library since his father had died.

Which means that the answers he knows Elena is going to want are all sitting in the house she was meant to be safely cocooned in before the sun had set earlier tonight.

And how, Damon asks himself, does one tell the girl determined to help him regain his memory that it's sitting in her family library?

That's what has made him uneasy, Damon realizes. There's so much more to this then him simply having lost a year of his incredibly long life and what he hates, really _hates_, is that he has to tell Elena that it's so much more then she thinks and that the more involves her except…he's not really sure what the more is.

That, Damon decides, is part of what's currently frustrating the hell out of him.

The other part is solely focused on the fact that he can't quite let go of the feel of Elena's body imprinted upon his own.

Complicated, Damon muses, is the starting point of the situation that he has suddenly found himself in.

Taking another sip of his bourbon, he ignores the person he can hear walking up the hallways, knowing instinctively that it wasn't Elena.

Though, he somehow doubts his unspoken suggestion of staying in the library was going to stick for very long the longer she spends thinking about everything he hasn't told her.

"Somehow, this seems to be beneath you." Stefan's voice is tinged with faint amusement and Damon relaxes his shoulders slightly, silently pleased that it's his brother and not one of the other residents in this house.

"What does?"

"Skulking in a dark hallway. Drinking, though that's not as unusual, avoiding Caroline, I assume, Elijah too and maybe Elena?"

Damon cracks one eye open to shoot his brother a warning look he knows Stefan's not going to heed and then opens the other because there's something in his brother's eye that makes him pay attention.

Apparently, an older brother's need to listen and help his younger brother doesn't fade, even after a century.

"What?" He asks, knowing that it'll have something to do with Caroline and willing for his mind to be taken off Elena for a few minutes.

"It's soon, Damon."

Stefan's gaze has turned sombre and his voice has followed suit, making whatever feeling of relaxation he had enjoyed upon seeing his brother disappear completely at the words. It was, Damon reflects, unfortunate that Stefan was dragged into whatever this was as well.

Unfortunate too, that his brother had lost his memory like he had and that meant Stefan was just as involved.

How his brother is involved, Damon knows, remains to be seen.

"What's soon?" Damon drawls, offering his brother the bourbon and raising an eyebrow in surprise when Stefan takes it, downing the rest of the liquid.

His brother doesn't drink, not really and Damon turns to look at him fully, knowing that whatever Stefan's feeling has disturbed him enough to come to him.

"I don't have a fucking clue." Stefan takes a deep breath before continuing. "I had another one of those dreams."

Damon tenses more then he already is at his brother words. "You haven't had one of those for at least fifty years."

"Yep. Then tonight. There it was and this time, I threw Caroline out of bed and across the room into my desk." The remorse in Stefan's words is genuine and Damon rolls his eyes. "She's okay, but she wants to know what I dreamed about."

"So do I, Stefan." Damon points out, his brotherly instinct beginning to war with his impatience as Stefan hesitates at his words.

"It's exactly like the old one. Except more." Damon waits, hoping that there's going to be more added to his brother's explanation.

He sighs when he realizes Stefan's not going to expand. "More how, Stefan? Or are you just going to say you had a bad dream about me but can't go into the details because Elijah told you not, to fifty years ago?"

Stefan looks pained and Damon growls as he realizes that the only reason Stefan's standing beside him is because his little brother had wanted to make sure he was in one piece. Just like fifty years ago when Stefan had nearly lost control of his bloodlust because another dream, apparently similar to this brand new one, had rattled Stefan so much he had come looking for him and smelled the blood of a female hiker.

The carnage that had followed had been one of the worst spells of bloodlust his brother had gone through and the three months of detox he'd coaxed him through afterwards had been just as painful as the first time.

"I'll tell you when I can." Stefan's apologetic and Damon rolls his eyes. "Elijah's gone, too. To check on something. He'll be back by tomorrow night."

"Fine. Go back to Vampire Barbie. She's probably itching for an explanation." Damon dismisses him summarily, infuriated that his brother won't tell him anything about whatever it is that has rattled him and, not for the first time, wishing he knew something about the year he had no memory of.

Stefan wisely chooses to say nothing instead leaving with an incline of his head.

When he was sure his brother had disappeared, Damon slumps back against the wall, his head falling back to rest on the cool wall, the feeling that he's so close to losing the very slippery control he has on everything that has been kick started by Elena being out after curfew joining every other feeling he isn't aware he could actually _feel._

Hearing footsteps again, Damon opens his eyes and knows, instinctively, who's approaching him cautiously.

"You can't help yourself, can you?"

Elena doesn't wince at the ice in his voice, instead she sets her mouth, her eyes somewhat disapproving.

Against his will, Damon finds the expression amusing.

"And _you_ can't keep me confined in the library." She folds her arms across her chest and Damon notes she's keeping a careful distance between. He smirks a little, at it. "Besides, I'm hungry."

Silence follows her statement and Damon gets the feeling that she's just as surprised by it as he is and then rolls his eyes, pushing off the wall.

"Let me guess, you also have some questions you want answers too and figure you can do both while you eat?"

She rolls her eyes and crinkles her nose a little at his statement. "Something like that. But that's only assuming you have food in this house."

He eyes her for a moment, wondering if she's serious and calculating how long he can hold her off from asking her questions if he takes her to the kitchen and cooks her something. He'd have enough time, he thinks, to come up with a reasonable explanation for most of the questions if he made her something more complicated than a salad.

Pushing off the wall, he shifts his body so he's crowding her slightly and is somewhat pleased by the way she tenses as he leans down to bring his face close to hers.

"Fine. Follow me."

Her breath hitches and Damon fights the urge to slide his across her waist and yank her against him again, just to see if she really feels as good as she did before.

Instead, he steps away from her and walks away, expecting her to follow not only because of food but because she honestly thinks he has the answers she's looking for.

Answers, he knows, which lay in what happened in 1864.


	9. Heat

_****_Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

D/E

S/C

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Nine: Heat**

Elena's in the twilight zone. She has to be.

Because – out of everything that's happened to her in the past few hours – nothing comes as close to bizarre as watching Damon Salvatore cook.

The kitchen is, surprisingly, fully functioning and huge. It's a warm combination of dark wood and stainless steel, with flecked granite counters and windows at every turn. The appliances seem to be expensive and well kept, as far as she can see, and Damon Salvatore knows his way around them better than she would ever have done.

It makes no sense, seeing as Elena's pretty sure _she's_ the one who needs food to survive and not him. In fact, when she'd blurted out she was hungry, she'd expected to be fed something like well, stale bread was the first thing that had crossed her mind.

She definitely hadn't expected, however, the mouth-watering scent of tomato and basil sauce simmering away on the gas stove nor had she expected the entertainment of watching Damon knead fresh pasta dough.

Leaning against the counter by the stove, Elena feels heat tinge her cheeks as she remembers the way his forearms had flexed as he'd kneaded the dough.

It's irritating to find that the attraction she's associated only to the intensity of every moment they've shared has flared at the sight of him moving around the kitchen so competently, a tea towel slung over his shoulder as he chops garlic.

Elena's not sure how to handle the attraction which has sprung from this strange situation being tangled with something as simple as cooking.

Somehow, it makes the attraction more dangerous.

Frowning, Elena traces a finger around the base of the wineglass he handed to her when he'd opened wine for the sauce and wonders how it's possible that Damon Salvatore of all people is the one who can yank such a reaction from her.

"Stop scowling. Terrifying an inanimate object is not worth it." Elena glances up, startled at his words and meets Damon's amused gaze.

"I was thinking." She replies evenly, trying to ignore the fact that his forearms are flexing again as he stirs the sauce.

"About?"

There's something about his smirk that makes her wary. Like he knows she hasn't really taken her eyes off him since he'd started to cook.

She narrows her eyes. "How bizarre it is that you can cook."

Damon chuckles. "How is it bizarre?"

Elena stares at him, unable to comprehend how he doesn't find the fact that he's sliding half of the freshly chopped garlic into the sauce bizarre.

"Seriously? You're a vampire. You drink blood. Why should you know anything about cooking?" Elena asks incredulously, watching him take a small spoon out of a draw by his hip and place it next to the stove.

Damon turns to face her fully, folding his arms and leaning against the counter, one eyebrow quirked in an expression she's sure is going to make her feel stupid every single time he uses it.

"Why shouldn't I?"

Elena hates it when someone answers a question with a question and, she decides, she especially hates it when Damon Salvatore does it.

"That," she snaps, "is not an answer."

He smirks. "So?"

Seeing the pointlessness of trying to continue this conversation Elena raises the glass and takes a sip of the heady wine he'd offered her after he'd dumped some of it in the sauce she's sure is going to make her stomach growl soon.

She's glad when Damon seems to take her refusal to answer as an indication to put the homemade pasta in the salted boiling water. She watches him as he handles it delicately, carefully placing it in the water where she would have simply shoved it in and hoped it wouldn't stick together.

Taking another sip, Elena makes the decision that she's going to have to make the best of this new, bizarre situation. Especially if she wants to get answers from him about why, despite being a vampire, there is absolutely nothing supernatural in his library and where in 1864 she should start looking for clues as to his memory loss.

She also wanted to know what he knew about the strange…line that the guy Elijah had said to her. Because she was pretty sure he knew something.

"Elena? Set the table would you?" Damon's voice, suddenly serious as he tests the pasta, snaps her out of her thoughts.

"What?"

"Set the table. You know, knives, forks, spoons. Unless you want to eat with your hands." He indicates the draw she's meant to get the utensils from with a wave of his hand.

It takes her all of two seconds to realize that if she wants to get to the draw, she has to sidle past him and she's _very_ sure that it's a bad idea. Elena takes a healthy swallow of the wine and starts to consider how to take the long way around without making it seem obvious.

That is until she catches the twinkle in his eye that tells her he knows exactly what he's doing.

It's infuriating enough to make Elena scowl and, forcing herself not to slam the wineglass onto the counter, she brushes past him. At least, she tries to.

Damon turns in a move so deliberate Elena curses herself for taking the bait. Her hands come up in defence and her breath backs up in her lungs as she tilts her head back to look up at him slightly. She feels his hand settle smoothly on the curve of her hip as he offers her a spoonful of the sauce she'd been appreciating from a safe distance away.

Elena thinks about refusing to open her mouth for a split second before she meets Damon's gaze. It's warm and fierce and gentler then all the other times she's met it and because it's gentler, she opens her mouth unthinkingly.

The sauce is rich and smooth, sprinkled with spice and Elena's not sure how but the feel of it is erotic, especially combined with the blue of Damon's gaze and the warmth spreading from the hand on her hip.

"Good?" The huskiness of his voice causes a shiver to race down her spine even as she realizes how much of a bad idea this is.

"Uh-huh."

Her breath hitches as he drops the spoon back on the counter, his hand coming to settle on her other hip as she becomes aware she's let her hands rest on his chest.

It's the first time she's really voluntarily touched him and Elena's overcome with the urge to run her hands up and down the planes of Damon's chest, to feel the warm skin beneath the dark shirt and taste the mouth that's slowly coming to hover over hers.

The urge, all-consuming and hard to resist, combines with the gentleness in his gaze she's never seen before has her tilting her head back willingly, aching, once again, to kiss him.

* * *

><p>She's open to him and willing and Damon's sure he's never seen as something as erotic as Elena's lips closing around the spoonful of sauce he'd offered her.<p>

It takes all his self-control to not yank her right against him and take what she was offering but he'd decided, as he'd led her to the kitchen that he was going to distract her by letting himself seduce her.

To a certain point, of course. He's smart enough to know that seducing her into his bed would be a disaster for all parties involved.

At least, till they figured out what the hell was actually going on with this new twist of fate.

But kissing her, Damon decides gripping her hips a little more tightly. Kissing her he can do unless, of course, the pasta boils over.

Damon feels the heat of it and the sting of boiling water through his shirt and grits his teeth. "Fuck."

"Huh? What?" Elena sounds dazed and Damon can only wonder, grimly, what she would sound like had he of kissed her.

"Pasta. Boiling over." He sets her away from him and curses as he watches her eyes clear. "Go and set the table."

Damon can see the split second where she goes from cursing herself for being caught in that position to determining that she was only going to pester him about the questions she wanted answers to and from a safe distance away.

It's infuriating and challenging and Damon's knows if she was aware of the challenge she kept presenting to him, she would stop herself.

He decides he's not going to let her know about it just yet.

He watches as she finished sidling past him and yanks open the cutlery draw, all the while watching him cautiously out of the corner of her eye.

It's amuses him that her eyes have not left him since he'd led her to into the kitchen and started pulling fresh ingredients out of the refrigerator.

It hadn't been hard to see, as he'd started the sauce, that Elena was genuinely confused by the fact that he was both cooking and she was trying to figure out how to reconcile that in her mind with every story she'd ever heard about their diet being all about blood.

Technically, he prefers blood but every once in a decade gets the urge to cook something for himself that reminds him of his human years.

It's what he _was_ going to tell Elena when she asked because Damon highly doubts she would have been receptive to the news that the reason they have a working kitchen, food and all, is because Caroline has held onto nearly every facet of human life that she could, including her urge to comfort eat when his brother 'just wasn't enough'.

As it is, it had been enormously entertaining to tease her when she'd asked the question and useful.

A confused, off balance Elena Gilbert was going to be easier to keep away from the answers then one who could focus clearly and see that he really didn't want to give her any information whatsoever.

Draining the pasta, Damon can see that he's going to have to be very careful when they sit down because he can see that her focus was coming back and there's a hint of determination that hadn't been there before.

He has an uneasy feeling that it's there because she wants to know about the memories he's lost perhaps more than he even does.

Contemplatively, Damon shifts the pasta back into the saucepan and begins stirring the tomato sauce through it, acknowledging that it smells good, as he wonders how he's going to get out of explaining that he doesn't particularly want to know what happened in 1864 because he's got a bad feeling that whatever happened wasn't good.

He's not going to pretend that he's been a saint since 1864 but every time he thinks back to the blank slate in his memory, unease and dread wash over him as if something too terrible to remember happened.

As if someone had done something so horrific over a century of killing could not compare to that single act.

The worst part of it is that he is sure that, somehow, he had been instrumental in this act.

"Damon? Table's set. Is there anything else?" Elena's voice is steady but her hands aren't as his eyes snap to her.

It gives him enormous pleasure to see that she's still unsure. "Grab the parmesan from the fridge and prepare to have your tastebuds seduced."

He eyes her as he says it, glad he can see a slight hitch in her breath as she turns blindly to the refrigerator, opens it jerkily and reaches for the parmesan shavings he'd prepared earlier. He quickly slides the pasta onto two dishes and follows her to the table she's set in the dining room just off the kitchen.

She's set the places closest to the kitchen and he's amused that she's made sure they're sitting opposite each other on the long, mahogany table, as opposed to next to each other. She also hasn't lit the candles that are set on the table and he considers it then decides its overkill.

He doesn't need candlelight to unnerve her, after all.

He casts a quick glance around the room and notes that at some point or another, someone's going to have to remember to start dusting in the dining room. Unused by the house, the handsome room that's feels slightly cavernous is decorated in rich, dark colors like the rest of the house with the main object being, of course, the long table Damon's sure is close to two hundred years old.

The chairs, too, he realizes when he sits. Acknowledging that at some point or another, they were going to have to get the two hundred year old chairs new cushioning if it ever occurs to them to use the dining room again.

He allows her to eat silently for the first couple of minutes noting that he hadn't thought about food when he'd bought her home nor, apparently, had she. If the way she was wolfing down the pasta was anything to go by, anyway.

He wonders how he's going to keep her from asking questions when she slows down and then realizes with an unpleasant jolt, that it's fairly easy.

He wants to know about her life.

Not because he wants to know if she really _does_ know anything about her family's history but because he wants to _know_ about her life.

Vaguely, Damon wonders if this is part of the urge to exchange blood he's had before but he ignores it in favour of asking the question.

"Why New York?"

Elena glances up at him as she swallows and tilts her head in a move he finds strangely adorable. "What?"

"Why New York? After you turned eighteen." He elaborates when she doesn't say anything. "Don't get me wrong, I like the big city and bright lights. But I'd have pegged you more for a get out of the country girl then a get out of the state."

"Really?" Her eyes twinkle a little in surprise at his statement before she shrugs. "I don't know. New York seemed the furthest I could get away with, at the time. Mom and Dad weren't too pleased when I chose NYU over Duke and I didn't think they'd be overly pleased if I'd told them I wanted to go to London or Rome before I went to school."

He leans back in his chair as he contemplates her answer knowing, even if she didn't, that her parents had probably wanted to keep a close eye on her and Duke was a far better option for that than New York.

"Really? Why?"

Elena shrugs, picking up her wineglass and shaking her dark fall of hair back from her face. "I don't know. Because they're parents. First child leaving the nest and all. They got used to it, though. Dad even wanted me to stay there this summer instead of coming home. We got into a fight about it, actually."

Damon nearly chokes on the pasta he'd swallowed at her words and he glances up at her sharply. "What? Why did he say you couldn't come back?"

Elena stares at him and he can see her going over every word she'd said to him since they'd sat down. Her eyes widen slightly as she realizes all she's said and then narrow curiously as she realizes that the thing that had him pausing was her mention of an argument.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because you seem like Daddy's Little Girl. Somehow, an argument with daddy doesn't fit into that cliché." He covers smoothly and knows that Elena can see right through it.

Respect for her is fast becoming a dangerous thing, he thinks as she sits back and eyes him. "So? Why do you want to know his reasons?"

Damon can see two paths before him as he takes sip of wine to buy time. Either he answers the question truthfully or he changes the subject altogether and hopes she lets it drop for a few more minutes.

Because telling the truth is the less appealing of the two, Damon changes the subject. "Doesn't matter, does it? Especially now that you're home. Why do you want to go to Rome?"

Elena shrugs her shoulders a little at the question even as her lips curve at the thought of the ancient city still a thriving centre of Europe.

"Because it's Rome. Why else?"

If Elena Gilbert ever becomes aware of just how arousing she is with her head tilted slightly, her dark hair falling over one smooth, tan shoulder, a gentle smile curving her lips as her eyes sparkle with mischief, Damon decides, he might just have to kill her.

Because nothing, _nothing, _in his century long life has ever aroused him so much all he can think about is showing her just what it does to him to see that look.

He reaches for his wine and meets her gaze, not bothering to hide the arousal in them and is pleased to see her smile waver.

"Damon?"

He wonders, only briefly, when his plan to seduce her into forgetting to ask questions he didn't want to answer turned into seducing her, period.

Damon decides it doesn't matter as she bites her bottom lip uneasily just as long as she ends up exactly where he wants her.

* * *

><p>Elijah approaches the faintly lit two storey house lazily, aware that he is being watched closely and unperturbed.<p>

He strolls up the front porch steps and, sliding his coat off, he knocks twice on the door listening for the sounds of someone coming to answer the door.

The slow, light steps make him smile as he waits for the door to swing open. When it does, he inclines his head slightly at the person answering it.

"Hello Elijah."

Raising his head, Elijah meets the dark gaze of a woman who is no doubt related to Elena Gilbert. Though her features are slightly sharper and her hair curlier, the resemblance is strong and, as always, he feels he bond between them flare as she watches him steadily.

"Good evening Katherine. How have you been, my love?"

* * *

><p>AN: And a cliffhanger. Sorry. I can't seem to help myself. In saying that, this chapter did not go the way I planned it too from the start. For one, Elena and Damon were actually meant to kiss in this chapter. It's driving _me_ nuts that they're not cooperating but hey, when it happens, fingers crossed, it'll be worth it. Though I've got a feeling it will be soon. *spoiler* Like next chapter soon. Besides, am I the only one that thinks its sexy when Damon cooks? And the other thing is I wasn't going to bring Katherine into the story. Not really anyway. Then Elijah decided to visit her. Just to be clear, though it'll be explained in the next chapter, Elena and Katherine are _not_ dopplegangers in this story. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! And don't worry, at some point, all will definitely be explained! I promise!


	10. Insistence

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD

D/E

S/C

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Ten: Insistence  
><strong>

Something bizarre is going on; Caroline decides a few minutes after Stefan has left the room. Something _very_ bizarre is going on and Caroline's got a bad feeling her best friend is at the very centre of it.

Standing in front of an open window, waiting for Stefan to return, Caroline hasn't bothered to clean up the items scattered on the floor from when Stefan had thrown her clear across the room into his desk nor has she bothered to change the ripped sheets. There's no point in cleaning it up until she knows what's been going on in this house since Damon had carried Elena through the front door.

Though she doubts Stefan's going to tell her anything outside of apologizing for throwing her across the room again, Caroline knows that she's going to interrogate him until he breaks. She's not comfortable with the idea that there's something going on that could cause harm to him or even Damon and she has no doubt that Damon in trouble is what Stefan dreamed about.

Nothing in this world, Caroline knows, _nothing_ shakes Stefan Salvatore up like the idea of his big brother dying or being harmed beyond reason.

She has never understood her boyfriend devotion to his big brother. It's something well beyond her scope, the bond the two brothers' share and Caroline has no choice but to accept that it's something she will never understand.

That doesn't mean, however, that Stefan has to bail on her after he'd thrown her into a desk during a nightmare or that their shared agreement on keeping her away from Elena didn't warrant some serious explanation.

Which was what gave it away, Caroline realizes. Between the two of them, Caroline's aware she hasn't really been denied anything in the time since Damon turned her to save her. In their own way, both have provided everything she's ever wanted and more from Damon refurbishing the entire kitchen so she could eat whenever she wanted to Stefan making sure she has the best of everything and more.

Both, too, have provided Caroline with a sort of stand in family she never expected would fill the hole left by her unsatisfactory family life before she'd been turned.

And both, she thinks with a scowl, have made it clear that on no uncertain terms was she to go looking for Elena while her best friend was in the house.

She doesn't buy Damon's reasoning that she wouldn't be able to control herself if she caught a whiff of Elena's blood and she really doesn't buy that Damon let Elena live out of some misplaced appreciation of her spunk.

There are, Caroline has discovered, very few coincidences in this world once one became aware of the supernatural entities that roam the world.

She knows that Elena being here, without having had her throat torn out by her boyfriend, is no coincidence.

Neither is Damon's current fascination with her and that's one of the things that worry Caroline the most. She's not an idiot and something about the way Damon had acted when he was telling her to stay away from Elena, something about how he'd been when he'd caught her after she'd climbed down the tree outside of his bedroom had sent warning bells off.

He was acting like Stefan had in the first few months after her transition.

It's enough to make her nervous for her friend.

Caroline still doesn't understand the full mythology behind the bond that she has forged with Stefan. She only understands that she's tied to him in a way that's deeper than anything she could have ever imagined when she was human. She also understands that the way Stefan had acted after she had recovered from the shock of being turned – the protectiveness, the watchfulness, the inability to be away from her for more than an hour – was just the beginning of a bond forming between a vampire and his mate.

She understands too, what happens when they give into the heat that's generating between them. The sex is incredible, the tentative sweetness afterwards hard to handle, the pull of blood that starts it all too hard to resist a second time around and Caroline's terrified of what's going to happen to Elena if what she's thinking is right and Damon has already started to bond with her.

Because Damon isn't Stefan and, as far as she knows, kindness is shown once every few years and cynicism and sarcasm are deflectors in case anything becomes too personal. The sweetness that Stefan shows her, she has never seen in Damon and Caroline can't help but be afraid of what will happen to Elena if everything she's observed is correct.

"You're biting your lip." Stefan's voice is low in her ear and his arms strong around her waist as she jolts. "You only do that when you're worried."

Immediately, Caroline let's go of her bottom lip, running her tongue over the sting to soothe it. "Well, someone has to be worried. Something weird is going on in this house. Or didn't you notice you threw me into a desk because of a nightmare?"

She decides that she's irritated with Stefan as she jerks herself away from his hold and turns, leaning against the window sill and folding her arms. Stefan settles his hands on her hips instead and she can see the remorse in his eyes.

"I'm sorry about that." He nods towards the desk before leaning down, Caroline knowing exactly what he's about to do, slaps a hand over his mouth. "What?" Stefan's question is muffled by her hand and Caroline smiles a little.

"Uh-uh. No. You tell me what the hell is going on before I make you sleep in a guest room." She says, her eyes warning him how serious she is.

Stefan narrows his gaze, as if assessing her patience and then reaches up to pry her hand away from his mouth. Caroline takes in the way his jaw is set and knows a fight could be brewing.

"Why would you assume something's going on?"

"Stefan."

"Seriously."

"_Stefan._"

Her warning comes out as a growl and then Caroline nearly groans when Stefan takes his hands of her hips and folds his arms because she knows that's a signal he's not going to tell her anything he doesn't want too because of the protective streak that's become a mile wide since they had bonded.

"No. Caroline. If there's something going, it's in your head." She can tell Stefan knows it's the wrong thing to say even before he says it and she pushes at him before he finished his sentence.

He takes a few steps back and she points at him. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. I'm also going to pretend you aren't acting like your brother and deflecting because you're trying to protect me. Stefan, tell me what's going on because I know it involves Elena and I'm terrified your brother is bonding with her."

Stefan pauses at that, his arm muscles tensing before relaxing. He blows out a breath and Caroline knows that she's introduced something to him that he hasn't thought about or observed. At least, she thinks she has until Stefan shakes his head.

"Damon's not bonding with her, Caroline. It's not in his nature." Stefan says. "He's too apathetic and he's never wanted – "

"You told me it didn't matter if you wanted to or not. You couldn't help yourself. Remember?" Caroline interrupts and then sighs. "Stefan, please tell me what the hell is going on. Something doesn't feel right."

Stefan reaches up to rub his jaw, his eyes closings as he exhales loudly. Caroline waits impatiently, wondering if whatever's going on is really worth keeping a secret. Somehow, she doubts it. Nothing in the supernatural world which she now lives in can surprise her anymore and somehow she doubts that whatever is going is more than they can handle.

That is until Stefan opens his eyes and looks her directly in the eyes, his expression sombre.

"A really long time ago, Caroline, back when we were human something happened. Something _bad_ happened and a spell was cast, involving Damon." Stefan pauses, as if bracing himself for what he's about to tell her.

It irritates her.

"For God's sake's, Stefan. Just tell me!"

"In accordance to the spell, Damon's going to die, Caroline." She feels her knees go weak at the news as Stefan watches her. "Damon's going to die and there's nothing we can do about it."

Surprised, Caroline thinks numbly, is an understatement.

* * *

><p>"Damon?"<p>

Elena feels her breath backing up in her lungs as Damon's dark gaze holds hers.

Her blood starts heating and Elena can only wonder why this time, there are no alarm bells ringing in her head or irritation at this feeling or even fear at the thought of surrendering. All Elena can think about is what it would be like to kiss him.

It's amazing, she thinks vaguely, how when the right man is sitting in front of you, the only thing you can think of is what it would be like to be as close to him as possible.

Before she can think about how terrifying that thought actually is, Damon looks away and picks up his wineglass. It enough to make her realize her throat has gone dry and she reaches for her own glass of wine, trying not to notice the way Damon drains his and reaches for the bottle again.

She needs to get back on track, Elena thinks. She needs to ask him the questions she's had stored in her mind since she'd realized there was nothing in his library that could help him in regaining his memory.

She needs to push all thoughts of kissing him out of her mind until Damon has answered her questions and she's thinking straight again.

She also needs more wine.

The second Damon places the bottle back on the table; she reaches for it and pours herself some more, ignoring the raised eyebrow he gives her. She raises the glass back to her lips and takes another gulp, praying that the wine will settle the heat in her blood and the nerves in her stomach.

When it doesn't, Elena decides to go on anyway.

"Why are there no supernatural documents in your library?" Elena asks her eyes focused on the wall just over his shoulder.

Damon pauses for a moment and Elena wonders what's going through his mind when she sees his eyes go carefully blank and the curious, approachable man he had been before fall away. Damon leans back in his chair and tilts his head slightly, as if assessing her.

"Why do you assume there are none?" He replies and she scowls, her eyes flying to his at the question. Damon offers her a patronizing look, as if he knew that what he had said would draw that reaction from her.

"Because I've been over every source I could get my hands on and there's nothing. Save the fact that your father was a cheapskate."

Damon smirks a little at that. "True. Are you sure you looked in the right places?"

"_Yes_." Elena hisses, unable to help herself. "Damon, tell me why there is absolutely nothing personal on either the supernatural or 1864 in your library. It makes no sense. If this town has always known about vampires, why wouldn't there be any recordings of it?"

"What if there are no recordings of it because the town _didn't_ know about vampires until 1864?" Damon inquires, making Elena pause in order to mull it over.

That would make sense, Elena acknowledges reluctantly. As far as she knows, the legend of Mystic Falls starts in 1864 with the turning of Damon Salvatore and his brother, Stefan. According to the legend, Damon and Stefan were turned in the summer of 1864 and then proceeded to massacre many of the families of Mystic Falls, including many of the founding families. Towards the end of the summer, when their bloodlust had cooled and they had taken to prowling the streets of Mystic Falls searching for humans, the occupants of Mystic Falls had chosen to try and kill the two brothers only to be slaughtered in their attempt. The townspeople had then been punished by being confined to their houses during the night as Damon had sworn to never leave the town, punishing them for their uprising against the two vampire brothers.

"Do you know it's fascinating watching you think? You get a line right between your eyes." Damon interrupts her train of thought with a cool smirk and curious eyes.

Elena meets his gaze and wonders if Damon knows the legend of Mystic Falls. He probably does, she allows and he probably, too, has no clue if it's true or not.

"I was just thinking you might be right. What if there are no records because no-one knew? I mean, according to everything I've ever heard, Mystic Falls was a peaceful settler town up until the summer of 1864. Why would anyone have known about vampires or even what was going to happen?" Elena muses, smoothing her brow because it annoys her that Damon had noticed she does that when she's thinking.

"Elena."

"No, seriously, Damon. Think about it. You have no records which mean that there probably were none. By the time people knew what was going on, half of them would have been dead and the other half too terrified to write it down. That's why there was only a verbal legend until the twentieth century when someone bothered to write it down." Elena can feel herself becoming excited as she thinks about it, the explanation both plausible and saving her from being overly irritated with Damon.

"Elena." Damon tries again and she ignores him.

"But that means we're going to have to figure out - "

Damon cuts her off, catching her hand in his and pulling her forward.

"_Elena._"

Almost of its own volition, Elena's hand turns in Damon's grasp, their fingers entwining even as she thinks '_too close, much too close._'

Her entire field of vision is Damon's face and Elena thinks dizzily, how unfair it is that a man could be this beautiful and this masculine all at once. She thinks, too, how unfair it is that his eyes can be so mesmerizing.

"What?" She breathes when it seems like Damon has forgotten what he was going to say.

He says nothing. His eyes searching hers and Elena wonders if maybe her frustration with him is bound up in the fact that whenever they get this close, whenever it seems like he's actually going to _do_ something about what crackles between them, something interrupts or he pulls away when she knows – no matter how frightened of this attraction she is – she doesn't want him to pull away.

For a moment, Elena actually thinks he's going to do something about it. She actually thinks that maybe this time; he's going to kiss her.

Her blood swims at the thought, her body starts overheating again and Elena feels her pulse rapidly speed up as she considers it.

"Damon." Her voice is barely more than a whisper and Elena knows she would be shocked if she heard the pleading note in her voice.

He lets out a ragged breath at her voice. "God, you smell amazing."

Elena nearly whimpers as his other hand rises to sweep her hair away from her neck, his fingers trailing over her pulse point.

It should be frightening. Him touching her throat, his pupils dilating as he feels how quickly her pulse is hammering, what he wants from her clear in his touch.

It's not.

Elena is only aroused further by it. The thought of giving him her blood, the thought of him taking something so essential to her being is exciting. Sharing herself in that way, surrendering to it and everything else he's offered unknowingly is unbearably arousing and Elena _aches_ with the thought of it.

Elena leans into the hand on her neck, her eyelids fluttering, her entire being focused on Damon and his touch.

That is, until he pulls away.

"Damon."

He moves quickly, standing and knocking the chair over in his haste. Elena try's to focus on him as he stands, though her heads still swimming from the ache of wanting and she shakes it to clear her thoughts.

"Stay here, Elena." Damon demands, his breathing ragged.

Elena stares at him, unable to comprehend that he has pulled away again even as he strides away, into the kitchen. For a moment, she considers obeying him and then decides that she's sick of him telling her what to do.

Knowing that if she does this everything might change; Elena stands and follows Damon into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>He can almost taste her.<p>

Damon grips the granite counter tightly; trying to control his urge to sink his teeth into the fluttering pulse point Elena had let him touch.

God, she was so trusting. So willing.

So unaware of what he actually wanted to do to her.

Damon wonders how the hell his careful plan to seduce and distract had spiralled out of control so quickly.

He'd so carefully controlled that primitive urge to sink his teeth into her neck as he sank into her. Then it had flared. Like a kindling in the hot sun, watching her figure out the existence of documents from 1864 had nearly made him spontaneously combust.

He'd never thought watching someone use their mind could be so damn erotic. But it had been. Watching Elena talk her way through an answer he hadn't wanted to give had been so arousing he hadn't been able to help himself and the urge to take her, to taste her had almost been impossible to resist.

Especially when she looked so willing as he'd grappled with what he wanted and what he knew was the right thing.

Damon has no doubt that he did the right thing in leaving her. He also has no doubt that if she walks into the kitchen, he won't be able to help himself.

He can already see himself pushing up the white skirt of her dress, sliding his hands up those long smooth legs as he takes her mouth in a kiss that's nothing short of possession.

"Damon."

He turns at her voice, infuriated and pleased that she hadn't listened to him.

She's standing there, her hands shaking as she looks at him, that dark waterfall of hair falling over one shoulder and he thinks everything anyone has ever said about willpower is overrated.

He moves towards her, like a predator stalking his prey. Elena eyes him warily as she back away from him slowly.

"What is it with you and not listening? Did someone forget to connect that wire in your head or something?" He asks silkily. "Stay in my room, stay in the library, stay in the dining room. You didn't listen to any of them, did you Elena?"

He can hear her heart speeding up and Damon watches as Elena bumps into the counter and flattens herself against it even as he moves close, his hands sliding onto her hips in a possessive grip he has no doubt she notices.

"Damon."

She all but whimpers his name as he presses against her. Damon looks down at her and Elena's gaze is at once clouded and determined, her hands coming to rest tentatively on his arms and her tongue darting out to lick her lips nervously.

It's amazing how that one simple gesture is enough for the last sliver of resistance to collapse into the primitive need to claim her.

"God, you're so perfect."

Elena never gets the chance to stammer her way out of that as he covers her mouth with his own.

* * *

><p>AN: So, how was it? I'm trying to push these characters along but, well, Damon and Elena get caught up in themselves basically. However, I love writing Caroline in this. I like being able to give her a background and a reason to worry about Elena. Interesting note too, when I first started this story, the entire thing was meant to be wrapped up within ten chapters. I'm kind of glad that it hasn't wrapped itself up and I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on what's been going on! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	11. Only Hours Ago

_****_Disclaimer: Don't own TVD

D/E

S/C

And as of right now, E/K, apparently.

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Eleven: Only Hours Ago  
><strong>

She is still the most exquisite creature he has ever seen in his life.

Elijah slides a hand up Katherine's smooth back and into her hair, his lips tilting as she nestles closer to his side and the hand splayed on his stomach slides over it to catch his other hand in hers, entangling their fingers.

They are laying in the living room of her house, the room only lit by a lamp in the corner that casts shadows around. Elijah wonders idly if they will every hold themselves off long enough to make it to their bedroom before they give into their need for each other.

Over a hundred years of experience tell him that it isn't likely.

It surprises him still that after a hundred years, he can still need her just as desperately as he did a hundred and sixty-four years ago when she was nothing more than a pretty human girl with a wicked smile which had faltered the moment she had seen him.

Elijah smiles a little at the memory and lifts the hand he is holding to his lips.

It causes her to stir even as he laces their fingers together again and waits for her tilt her head back to look at him.

The sleepy, satisfied half-smile on her face is a familiar to him as the wicked smile from when they first met but much more special. He is, he knows, the only one who has ever seen this smile and the only one who ever will.

"You're still awake?" Her voice is just as sleepy as her smile and Elijah kisses her hand again.

"You have yet to exhaust me, my love." He teases, his eyes dipping down to the expanse of smooth skin she has pressed against him before returning to her eyes. "You also haven't told me how you are."

It's a testament to how well he knows her that he catches the flicker of worry in her gaze. It's there for less than an instant and gone the next. He stays quiet about it as she slides up to straddle him, smiling slyly as he pulls their hands apart to stroke the long hair away from her face so he can see her properly.

"I'm fine." She says in response to his question and Elijah raises an eyebrow. "Don't do that. I'm fine, I swear."

It sometimes amuses him that she forgets their bond goes far deeper than simply tying themselves to each other. After a hundred and sixty odd years, Elijah can feel the worry that's seeping through her even as she lies to him and his expression turns serious.

"So, you've been having no dreams about him dying? No memories about what happened that night are resurfacing? You're not lying to me by telling me you're fine?"

Katherine pauses, her lips curving downward at his question and he is again reminded of the girl she had been before he'd claimed her. He had found her expression of displeasure when he had refused to dance with her that first evening endearing. It hadn't lost its allure since then.

"Something has happened, hasn't it?" Katherine's question is accusatory as she lifts herself off him and reaches for his shirt.

Elijah frowns a little at her as she covers herself with his shirt before throwing him his trousers. He had known she wouldn't be pleased with him when he told her why he had come to visit but the fear he can feel coursing through her is not what he had expected.

She is not one to fear something without good reason and as far as he knows, she has never had good reason to fear anything.

"What has you afraid, Katherine?" He asks as he pulls on his trousers and reaches for her.

She glares at him at his question, slipping away from his grasp to stand. Elijah contemplates staying on the floor and then decides he doesn't like the disadvantage it gives him.

Bond or no bond, he refuses to be the one at the disadvantage.

Katherine watches him stand and shifts a little, Elijah eyes dip down to bare legs as she shifts and forces himself to not smile at the sight of his bite on her thigh. He frowns instead, when she shifts again and he knows she's more than uncomfortable.

"Katherine, what's wrong?" He asks the question softly; careful of pushing her because he knows all too well what happens when she is not given a choice in answering a question.

She looks away from him, running a hand through the dishevelled curls the color of her descendant, and biting her bottom lip. Elijah can feel the part of him bonded to her – the animal part that does nothing but care for the welfare of his mate - demand her protection even though he doesn't know what from.

She is silent only a moment longer. "Do you remember the night you came to me for the first time?"

Elijah hears something in her voice that worries him even as he dips his head in acknowledgement of the first time he had made love to her. It had been, he remembered, quite a trick to find his way into her house and into her room. Even trickier to not claim her as his the first time he had sunk himself into her supple body.

"What of it?" He prompts when she doesn't seem willing to go on.

"You know I loved you before that, don't you?" Katherine's eyes are luminous as she asks the question and Elijah reaches for her again at it. She lets him fold his arms around her and presses close. "Elijah, I loved you before that."

"I know."

There's a feeling of dread in his stomach and Elijah wonders if it has more to do with what he thinks Katherine now knows or if it's because he is worried about his mate and the desperation in her voice as she asks him that question.

Katherine presses a kiss to his chest before looking up at him, her eyes a volatile mixture of desperation, love and anger.

"Then why didn't you tell me that night is what started that summer? Why didn't you tell me part of the reason for Damon's curse was you claiming me before, before _everything_?" He freezes at her questions and he knows his reaction gives her an answer she doesn't necessarily want.

She pulls herself away from him and he lets her go as she wraps her arms around herself and stares at him, betrayal now part of the volatility he can see in her eyes.

"Katherine – "

"A Bennett witch came to me after you had left. She warned me if I didn't wait someone I cared for would pay. She warned me that the person who would pay would take more than one person away from me. She warned me to stay away from you."

Elijah knows, the second she speaks, that there is nothing he can say to soothe the wound this has opened in her.

He knows too, unequivocally, that Stefan was right. Damon's days are numbered and it seems it still is his entire fault.

* * *

><p>In the seconds before Damon kisses her, Elena knows she had begun to feel a twinge of regret for pushing it. For pushing him into doing something he was clearly trying to avoid at all costs.<p>

She had felt a twinge of justified fear as she had registered, the second he had cornered her against the bench that, that what she was asking was more than just him assuaging the ache in her. That it was much more than simply kissing her.

Elena hadn't realized that what she was asking would have her know, without doubt, that one kiss from Damon Salvatore has ruined her for anyone else.

The knowledge sinks into her bones as his mouth presses against hers, his hand sliding up from her hips up to her waist and his words echoing in her mind even as she slides her arms around his neck and offers everything she has to give to him.

She expected him to take, to demand something from her that she isn't sure she knows how to give.

He doesn't.

Damon kisses her like she's special. Like he has all the time in the world to explore her and what she's offered him.

He kisses her, Elena thinks dizzily, like she is as perfect as he said she was.

She shudders as Damon coaxes her mouth open and takes the kiss deeper. Elena gasps against his mouth as he pulls her more tightly against him, his hands sliding to her waist and the feel of him, every single hard line of him makes her feel the simmer of heat that's always between them.

Elena feels her mouth soften under his, her body mould to the hard lines pressing against her and moans softly at the feel of him, at the feel of _all_ of him.

Some part of her, that's not caught in the kiss that's so gentle, is startled at the feel of him. Even more startling is the idea that _she_ is the cause of it.

Elena moves against him experimentally, her arms tightening around his neck and for a second, just a second, the kiss and the tenuous control she didn't know he had, broke.

The kiss heated instantly, his mouth grew rougher and Elena felt the simmer boil over as one of his hands slide up to cover her breast and she feels the touch arrow straight down to her core. Elena feels the whimper break through her lips when Damon pulls away for no more than a split second before his mouth comes back to hers and, this time, she feels the kiss everywhere.

It shoots straight through her and she feels liquid pool in her stomach as her legs go weak and her hand slides into his hair to cling as he nips her bottom lip before soothing it with his tongue.

Then, it changes again. Damon's mouth gentles against hers again and Elena can only moan in protest as the heat that had flared returns to a simmer and his hand slides back down to her waist and he starts stroking them up and down her waist in a repetitive motion that is so much more erotic than she ever thought it could be.

Damon pulls away slowly and Elena whimpers when he does, clutching his neck more tightly even though she can feel his hands tightening on her waist.

Elena keeps her eyes resolutely closed when she realizes that Damon doesn't seem to be about to say anything and the thought makes her tense.

Because that kiss was so much more than she expected.

No-one, she knows, will ever kiss her like that again. No-one will ever coax that response from her and no-one will ever, _ever_ stun her with the gentle way he had kissed her.

No-one will kiss her the way that makes her heart trip and fall over itself.

It should be frightening; Elena knows. The gentleness she hadn't been expecting, the snap of control taking it to the heat between them, the mere fact that his hands on her has caused that ache to flare into something she's never felt before.

It should be frightening the way she knows without doubt that there is no-one in the world like Damon Salvatore and the way he just kissed her.

It's not frightening, though.

It's terrifying.

It's terrifying because it's more than heat, more than attraction. The trip her heart has taken in that one kiss has turned the fear of the heat between them into the terror of _feeling_ more than she had ever thought she could.

"Elena."

Slowly, Elena lets her eyes drift open and she stops breathing when they meet his.

She can see it in his eyes. She can see what would have happened if he had acted on the instinct she provoked in him and the simmer of heat flares even as she remembers what he'd said before he had kissed her.

"I – I – "

It's hard, Elena discovers, to think of something to say when all you can think about is how terrifying it is that the heat of attraction is confusing itself with the trip your heart has taken the second he kisses you.

So she doesn't, Elena decides not to say anything and, instead, pulls his mouth back to hers needing to see if it will happen again. If the feeling of being ruined for anyone else is still there.

Her mouth had barely touched his when he was torn away from her.

Elena lets out a startled cry at the movement and for a moment, is completely disorientated. She presses back against the bench and her gaze falls to Damon, who is lifting himself up off the floor with a murderous expression on his face.

The look is so different to the way he was looking at her before; Elena lets out a nervous giggle that is drowned out by a furious shriek.

"Are you going to _die_?"

The question startles her and Elena finally notices the reason that Damon was pulled away from her so suddenly.

Caroline Forbes eyes are sparkling with fury as she stands between Damon and Elena and glares at him.

Elena swallows slightly as she watches Caroline, her stance one that reminds Elena of the way she used to tear someone down at school when she thought they were being too annoying.

"Caroline - "

"Are you going to die? Did you seriously think you could keep this from me?" Caroline demands and Elena bites her lip as she recognizes that tone as well.

"Yes. I did. At least, until I was _dead_." Damon snarls at her, his blue eyes lighting at the demand in her voice.

"That is not funny, Damon. Are you going to die or not? 'Cause if you are and you didn't tell me, I'm going to kill you. I will actually kill you."

"I'm terrified. Can't you see me shaking from fear?"

Elena is wondering what's wired wrong in her head to make her find this conversation amusing until she registers what they're talking about.

"You're going to die?"

Her quiet, shocked question stops Caroline from retorting and Damon from advancing any further on the blond.

They both turn to her and Damon frowns at the stricken look on her face.

"Elena. You're standing there." Caroline says it blankly, as if she hadn't been expecting to see her standing there.

Looking thoroughly kissed, Elena suddenly realizes. She suddenly becomes aware that her lips must be swollen from Damon's and she's still breathing heavily and she's only just becoming aware that she hasn't moved away from the bench he had pressed her against minutes ago.

"What did you mean Damon's going to die? Why? I thought you couldn't die unless you were – unless you were staked or something?" Elena asks, her eyes sliding from Caroline's face to Damon's.

He was watching her with an inscrutable expression she suddenly realizes was on his face when she first woke up and it shocks her to find that it hurts a little to see it. She has been able to see so much in his gaze since that moment in her bedroom, so much that tells her what he's thinking or feeling and she feels shut out when she can't see anything.

"Yeah, or you were cursed to die."

"Caroline."

A new voice scolds Caroline before Elena can react to what the blond just said and she glances towards the doorway and feels her knees start to shake as he appears in the room.

It's amazing, Elena thinks how _normal_ they look now and how _abnormal_ they looked when their fangs were descending towards a throat as their victim struggled for air.

"For Christs' Sake. What are you two even doing here?" Damon swears at both of them even as she begins to lean heavily against the bench, her eyes darting to his face frantically.

Stefan, she remembers suddenly, his brother's name is Stefan and Stefan's speaking. "I – uh – may have accidentally told Caroline that – "

"You're going to die." Caroline snarls and Damon rolls his eyes.

"Stop being dramatic. Seriously Barbie, do you or do you not have better things to do with your shrill seeking voice than come down and demand an explanation as to something my brother has told you?" Damon demands as Stefan steps closer and Elena forces herself to inch away from him.

"Don't deflect. Are you going to die?"

"Yes." Damon snaps. "I'm going to die from being smothered by ridiculous demands from _you_."

Elena wants to smile at Damon's words just as much as she wants to smile at the way Caroline forces herself not to stamp her foot at his words. But she can't.

She's too aware of the other vampire in the room and her hand drifts to her throat she remembers him pinning her against the cold brick wall only hours ago.

_Only hours ago_. Elena thinks numbly. Only hours ago, she was a normal girl walking home from the library, trying to beat curfew. Only hours ago, she had thought Damon Salvatore was nothing more than a legend the town she grew up in was terrified. Only hours ago, she had thought her best friend was dead.

Only hours ago, Damon Salvatore had never kissed her or touched her or made her ache.

Elena feels her chest tightening and her breath shortening as she thinks numbly about all the things that are too unreal to believe that have happened in only hours.

"Damon." She gasps, frantically looking at him as she forgets how to breathe.

Saying his name is enough for him to glance at her and Elena looks at him pleadingly, knowing that he will know, somehow, what to do.

"Shut up and stay here, will you?" He snaps at the two of them before he strides over to her.

Elena feels one hand slide around her waist and the other grasp her chin, pulling it up so he can search her face. Elena knows she looks panicked and she knows it's partly because of who is in the room and partly because finding her breath has become so difficult.

"It's okay. It's okay. Breathe, Elena." His voice is far from soothing and he sounds frustrated even as his hand starts stroking up and down her waist the way it had before. "One breath after the other. Just in and out."

Elena closes her eyes and tries to focus on the rhythmic stroking of his hand. For a second, she thinks that it's going to work. She thinks that maybe she'll be okay and then she remembers what Caroline had said when she'd torn Damon away from her.

Opening her eyes, Elena meets his solemn gaze and feels the panic rise all over again at the thought of him dying.

"Are you going to die?"

Elena feels the panic start choking her when Damon's eyes darken and his mouth firms. She knows, just from that, that the answer isn't 'no'.

* * *

><p>AN: Okay, so I learned two things when writing this chapter. One, it's incredibly hard to do when you're up to your ears in university assignments on _King Lear,_ ethics and World War One and two, it's very intimidating writing a D/E make out scene after the incredible one in 3x19 because honestly? How is anyone ever going to top that? So, I suppose I got a little writer-shy when I sat down to write this. Hence why its probably not the best I could do but I feel like I owed everyone a chapter because, well, I'm not going to keep everyone waiting for another six months. Anyway, let me know what you think! I think we got another piece of the puzzle in this chapter! I hope you enjoyed!


	12. Choice

Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.

D/E

S/C

E/K

* * *

><p><em><strong>A Sinner Before the Gates of Heaven<strong>_

**Chapter Twelve: Choice  
><strong>

Before Elena asks him if he's going to die, Damon knows he could have cheerfully murdered Caroline and her big mouth when she had yanked him away from Elena just as things had been about to get interesting.

After he doesn't answer Elena's question with a firm 'no' and she looks at him like he's shattered every illusion she's ever had, Damon knows he will not simply murder Caroline cheerfully. He will gladly torture her _and _Stefan before murdering both of them slowly and happily.

Because neither of them should be anywhere remotely close to the kitchen, demanding things of him he has no answer to and interrupting the one thing he's been aching to do since Elena Gilbert opened her eyes earlier tonight.

"Oh, my God. You're going to die?" Elena sounds panicked as she speaks and Damon grips her hips a little harder than necessary when she speaks. She doesn't wince at the force of his grip, only pales slightly when he doesn't answer.

"Oh, my God. You haven't told her?"

Caroline's shriek makes him want to strangle her. "No, Blondie. I haven't. I've been keeping it as a special surprise. So, _surprise_."

Damon knows the look he shoots Caroline would easily have made others wither and die. It doesn't seem to have that effect on the blond standing in front of him.

Instead, he sees her bottom lip quiver slightly before she firms it and Stefan moves to stand next to his girlfriend, his hand sliding down her back to settle on the small of her back.

He's still going to kill both of them, he decides, simply for interrupting what was happening - or going to happen – between him and Elena.

"Damon?" Elena's quivering voice interrupts his dark musings and he looks at her.

She's so pale.

He decides he isn't going to kill Stefan and Caroline for interrupting him and Elena; he's going to kill them for taking the blush that had tinged the sweep of her cheekbones when he'd been pulled away from her.

"It's okay." He responds softly.

"Are you going to die?"

Damon stares at her as he realizes that he's not going to be able to deflect her questions sarcastically the way he's been doing with Caroline and his mouth firms.

Because this is not the way he wanted to tell Elena what little he knows of why she's in the Boarding House. It is definitely _not_ the way he wants to tell her there is a possibility there is so much more to her existence then simply being a girl from Mystic Falls.

Elena opens her mouth again, about to repeat the question he doesn't want to answer and he shakes his head at her imperceptibly.

Damon keeps one hand firmly on Elena's hip – knowing instinctively that if he maintains contact with her that she'll remain calm – he turns to face Caroline and Stefan, one who is staring at him defiantly, the other somewhat apologetically.

"Leave." He commands.

Caroline's mouth drops open. "Excuse me?"

"Leave. It's one word that requires one action." Damon snaps and Stefan stares at him in shock. He has no doubt that Stefan thought he was going to explain it Caroline.

Even though Damon knows that Stefan is well aware that he's not going to tell either one of them anything before he's good and ready.

"Caroline. Come on."

The blond swings to face her boyfriend, effectively shifting her withering gaze to the other brother. "What? _You_ tell me he's going to _die_ and that you know and then expect me to leave? Are you insane? You _are_ insane."

Damon sees Stefan's face tighten and is fascinated enough to watch his brother wrench his balls from Caroline's grasp long enough to issue an order that he knows Caroline won't be able to circumvent.

"Caroline, we're going. Damon doesn't want us to be here. Move." Stefan's tone is firm, unyielding and one he uses to his advantage once every fifty years or so.

Caroline gapes at him simply because he has never used that tone with her.

Before she can recover her equilibrium, Stefan grasps her upper arm and walks her from the room even as her expression changes from gaping surprise to mutinous.

For a moment, there's nothing but a charged silence they leave behind that reminds him that he has to turn back to the girl who hasn't taken her eyes off him, even with the show that Caroline and Stefan have so graciously chosen to put on for them.

Damon waits until he can barely hear Caroline's stuttering before he turns back to Elena, his hand falling back to her other hip as he forces himself to meet her eyes.

She looks like the rug has been pulled from beneath her feet as she meets his gaze and fear has darkened her gaze. Swallowing hard, Damon decides that maybe he should answer her question when he isn't holding on to her.

Reluctantly, he releases her hips and takes a step back. Elena watches him step away, clinging to the bench as if it's her lifeline.

The silence that Caroline and Stefan have left turns heavy and Damon knows it's because she's about to repeat the questions he doesn't really want to answer. He doesn't want to answer because he can only give her something that he has believed for over a century, an answer that doesn't make sense because he simply _doesn't remember_.

Elena slides her hands across the bench and he can see her considering what to say even as he watches her caress the bench top.

"Will you answer my question?" She asks quietly.

Damon eyes her, blowing out a breath before shrugging. "Do you want me to answer the question?"

Her eyes flash because he's already noticed that she hates him answering a question with one of his own before the fire banks and she nods.

"Please."

He fights the urge to run his hand through his hair and then decides that he doesn't want to fight the urge to drink while he attempts to answer a question he's not entirely sure she wants answered.

"I need a drink. Come on." He says, holding out his hand without thinking.

Elena freezes at the offer of his hand and for a split second he pauses.

The realization that if he tells her what she wants to hear, if he admits that there's the possibility he's been fated to die, then he's going to tell her everything he's been sure to not tell her hits him like a sledgehammer. Because there's no way he can answer her question without telling her all the things he's been making her run around in circles to find.

Chasing close on the heels of that one realization is the comprehension that if she takes his hand then she's going to have to sink even deeper into a world he can't know if she wants to be involved in.

If she takes his hand, Damon suddenly knows with absolute clarity, he won't be able to let her go. Even if they only have a the rest of the night, three weeks or forever, if Elena takes his hand right now, he won't be able to let her go.

If Elena Gilbert takes his hand, she'll seal her own fate in a way more permanent than either of them could possibly understand.

* * *

><p>"What the hell Stefan!?"<p>

Caroline yanks her arm away out of her boyfriend's grip as he marches her into their room and whirls around to face him.

The inscrutable look on his face gives her pause for only a second before she folds her arm, ready for the fight she hadn't seen coming.

"Are you seriously asking me that? Storming into the kitchen, Caroline? Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Stefan's voice is level, calm and holds that infuriating note that is only vaguely patronising as he adjusts himself on the moral high ground.

"No. But then, what did you think I was going to do when you told me Damon was going to die?" She snaps.

Stefan folds his arms. "_Wait_. I expected you to wait until I told you the full story. Not storm off because you thought that Damon had neglected to tell you something oh so important."

Caroline gapes at him. She actually feels her mouth fall open as she registers what he's just said. Does he not get it? Does he not understand that the thought of not having Damon around – annoying, dominate jerk that he is – is like telling her that she has only one lung to survive with. She'll be able to breath, just not properly for the rest of her life.

"Are you kidding me, right now? Stefan, if you wanted me to the full story, lead with something that doesn't start with Damon's going to die! God! You're such an idiot sometimes!" Caroline snaps, throwing her hands in the air even as his eyes narrow.

"I can't, okay? Even if I wanted to, the only thing I could have told you is that Damon might die." Stefan's sounds pained, like he's revealing something that he shouldn't.

She snorts. "I don't believe you for a second. What aren't you telling me?"

Stefan sighs, closing his eyes in a move that speaks of bone deep exhaustion that normally would have made her soften. Except this time, she can't. Not when he clearly has no sympathy for what those words have put her through.

"I can't tell you, Caroline."

She almost explodes. "Why not!? What can you not tell me? What is so important about your little revelation that you can't tell me, huh? _What?_"

She's pushing and she knows she is. Caroline understands that the tone Stefan had taken with her in the kitchen when Damon had ordered them to leave is one he doesn't ever use. Not with her, at least. That tone and the fact that he'd dragged her from the kitchen should have been a testament to the fact that the subject she's trying to push is closed. The door to this subject has been slammed shut by Damon and, she realizes in some part of her mind that's not mad, is about to be dead locked by Stefan.

"I can't tell you because the less you know the better, okay? So don't ask, don't demand and _don't _go after Damon about it." Stefan's tone is commanding and Caroline has no doubt that it's an order he expects her to obey.

An edict that he thinks she won't defy in her need to find out what the hell is going on. Righteous indignation fills her and she glares at Stefan.

"Don't you _dare_ try and order me around. You have absolutely no right." She says it contemptuously, her voice challenging even as every fibre in her being warns against saying something so outright defiant to her boyfriend in the face of one of the only commands he's ever issued.

Stefan doesn't command after all, that always falls to Damon. Stefan coaxes, cajoles and generally lets her do what she wants even if he first has to convince her that she wants to do what_ he_ wants.

But there's something else there, something that has caused the command to leave his mouth and she feels her blood pulse as the bond they've formed flares and knows that the reason her instincts told her to not challenge him is because the command hasn't come from the Stefan she knows. It's come from the animal part of him that wants to do nothing more than protect her from something that could hurt her.

Even as the thought registers Stefan starts approaching. His approach is vaguely predatory and his face has hardened into something more intense, something that makes her giddy and grasp at the anger that had propelled her to push him this far.

Caroline cautiously starts to back away even as Stefan moves closer. It registers when she's only a few steps away from his antique desk that Stefan is going to trap her against it and she knows that while she is faster than she could ever have possibly dreamed, Stefan is faster.

She feels the edge of the desk dig into her back as Stefan's arms curve around her, one of his hands resting on the desk as his body presses her more firmly against it.

The intensity on his face is unnerving as his hands come up to push aside the curls that cover the right side of her neck. Caroline feels her breathing shorten as his fingers trace the scar she has there.

The scar he left when he marked her as his for the very first time.

"This," he murmurs, his fingers cool against her neck, "says that I have the right to ask you not to do something for your own good."

"Why?" She wants to add more to her question but she can barely breathe.

"Because this," Stefan lowers his head and presses one propriety, lingering kiss over the scar. Caroline's head falls back as her blood heats and the bite tingles under his mouth. "Means your mine."

Oh yes, she knows, that bite mark means she's Stefan's forever.

Even as she thinks it, Caroline's hand slips beneath his white wife beater, over his rippled abdomen to her own imprint on his skin. Her fingers come into contact with the scar she has left him, just below where his heart beats, the scar of the bite which sealed their bond.

This scar means exactly the same as what Stefan's does.

"Mine." She whispers, her fingers tracing it as she feels the press of him against her stomach.

Stefan's mouth slides from his mark, shifting up over her jaw line to hover over her mouth. Caroline stares up at him through her eyelashes and she sees the flash of possession even as he opens his mouth to speak.

"Always." He waits a beat, knowing she can't wait for him to kiss her. "Stay away from Damon, Caroline. Please."

It is no less a command than the one which had started this shift in argument but before she can argue, Stefan covers her mouth with his and she's fisting her hand over the mark she has left behind that proclaims he is hers.

* * *

><p>Elena can only stare at Damon's proffered hand.<p>

It doesn't escape her that this is the first time he's _asked_ her to go anywhere; the first time he's given her a choice in the matter.

She can't help but feel that he's giving her a much larger choice then going with him to find a drink.

That notion, that he's asking her for something more than simply taking his hand and letting him answer her question, frightens her.

Because there's so much she doesn't know about what's going on. So much that needs to be explained because she knows, deep in her bones, that the accusation Caroline has flung in their faces has something to do with what Damon has been trying to make her find out since she had woken.

That alone is enough to make her wary because it can only mean that whatever it is, involves her intimately.

And yet, Elena draws in a deep breath, if she doesn't take his hand, she'll have to walk away. She'll turn her back on this man who has made her feel more in only a few hours than she ever has in her whole life and she just _can't_.

She can't leave Damon alone. The thought of walking away from him and leaving him to deal with whatever it is he is about to tell her makes her stomach turn and an ache flare in her chest.

He is far to entrenched under her skin now and she can't simply walk away from him and leave behind what she feels.

If she felt less, Elena realizes, she could. She could walk away and leave behind the mystery of Damon's past, the fact that he's going to die and her role in it all.

But she feels more than she ought to and even with common sense telling her she should ignore his hand and walk away. Even as something deeper – the flare of heat in her blood, the yearning in her every fibre of her being – tells her that walking away would mean she will lose him and what she feels forever.

That certainty revolves slowly in her head and, for a moment, Elena finds it difficult to breathe.

But it's enough. The bone deep certainty is enough for her to reach out slowly and slip her hand into his grasp.

She concentrates on joining their hands, sliding her fingers through his until they are firmly intertwined. She is certain he won't miss the meaning of that, he won't miss that she's accepting whatever he's about to say and whatever comes next.

Looking up, away from their joined hands, Elena meets Damon's gaze.

It isn't as inscrutable as he thinks it is, she realizes.

He is genuinely shocked that she has accepted his hand and confused, as if he had thought she would run a hundred miles in the opposite direction with everything she doesn't understand he's offering her.

There is something deeper to. Some unidentifiable emotion lurking in the clear blue that she understands but can't name, as it's the same as the force which has propelled her to take his hand.

Shifting closer to him, Elena feels the need to reassure him, to let him know she's okay with the decision she's just made.

Swallowing hard, she lifts her other hand to touch his face. Rising on her toes, she presses her lips to his shyly.

Elena maintains the quiet kiss until she's sure that he understands what she's trying to make him feel.

Sinking back down, she strokes his cheek once, concentrating on the stubble that has begun to grow and the feel of it under her hand before meeting his gaze once more.

"Where are we going to get you that drink?" She asks quietly.

She's made her choice, she knows, and she understands that there's a high probability she'll never return to the life she had before this one night but that doesn't matter to her in the slightest because she knows with sudden clarity that she never would have walked away, if they'd met yesterday, tomorrow or ten years from now.

She would never have walked away because what to walk away from him would have broken her in some intrinsic way that would have always been irreparable.

And there is no way she could have lived with that for the rest of her life.

* * *

><p>AN:...what's this? An update? Why, yes. Yes, it is. Followed closely by an apology. I'm really sorry that I haven't updated in God knows how long! The truth is I kind of forgot where the storyline was heading. Seriously. I sat down to write one day and blanked. It was like writer's block except instead of being unable to write while knowing the plot, I could write, I just had no idea where this story was going because it got way out of hand. Especially seeing as this was only meant to be able ten chapters long and I'm onto chapter twelve with the feeling that it's going to be a hell of a lot longer than ten chapters! Anyway. I'm sorry it's taken me this long because I sincerely didn't mean to take forever or forget the plot or get so caught up in university and all my subjects that writing was placed on the back burner for a while. Anyway, thoughts? Even though I know nothing has been explained, at all?


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